The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis' Annual General Meeting at Basel in Switzerland on February 23, was hit by protests both inside and outside the AGM on its continuing litigation against the Section 3(d) of India's Patents Act which prohibits 'evergreening' - the practice of multinational pharmaceutical companies to extend their patent terms by making small, trivial changes to existing medicines and thereby preventing access to generic affordable drugs.

The campaigning groups around the world protested outside the AGM, to alert about the potentially devastating consequences for poorer populations. Nearly 40,000 signatures have been collected through an international web campaign launched by the global web movement Avaaz, urging Novartis to drop the case. A group of international health organisations had earlier asked the Novartis’ shareholders to take up the issue at the AGM.

In a statement delivered by Patrick Durisch on behalf of an international NGO-Coalition at the shareholders meet, the NGOs asked the Novartis to immediately cease its attack on the Indian law and generic medicines. “A pharmaceutical company which restricts the easy access to life-saving drugs and thereby neglects the human right to health, is a contradiction in itself. By dropping the case, Novartis would send a strong signal that it works for the benefit of sick people and not for their harm. We hope that our demands will be heard at last,” Durisch in his statement said.

Apart from this, sources said that Novartis offices in the the US were occupied by activists on February 22. In LA, Boston and New York, Novartis was told in its own offices that its actions were endangering millions of lives. In Boston over a hundred students demonstrated in front of the Novartis research facility.

As the Indian government is gearing up to fight this legal battle in the Supreme Court, campaigning groups around the world, including Oxfam, the Berne Declaration, Health GAP, and Act Up, held demonstrations to coincide with the day of the AGM, with a clear message for Novartis to stop the attack on the Indian law and generic medicines. The groups pointed out that the price of Novartis’s Glivec is ten times the cost of generic equivalents. They also argued that Section 3(d) of the Indian Patent Act is a legitimate and invaluable flexibility that represents an important public health safeguard in Indian law meant to support access to essential medicines.