Activists challenge patent on African anti-bronchitis drug

May 7, 2008, 16:52 GMT

Munich - Activists said Wednesday they had challenged a European patent on a method of extracting an anti-bronchitis drug from plants, and would prove that the method is based on ancient African knowledge.

The dispute before the European Patent Office in Munich involves the southern African plant umckaloabo, scientific name Pelargonium sidoides. Umckaloabo drugs extracted from its roots have been in wide use for a century.

A company, Dr. Willmar Schwabe of Karlsruhe, Germany, has patented a factory process to obtain the extract.

Michael Frein, of the German Lutheran church development service, said the process was effectively the same as the traditional one used in the town of Alice, South Africa and in Lesotho to make an anti- bronchitis and anti-tuberculosis remedy.

Frein said, 'We demand that plants and their drugs not be used without the consent of the indigenous people who discovered them.'

Mariam Mayet of the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) told reporters the company had no right to such a patent.

Activists said the company had snatched away African rights. They filed their protest on March 10 and demand the cancellation of patent and aid from Dr. Schwabe to extend umckaloabo plantings.

Traugott Ullrich, a spokesman for the company's subsidiary Spitzner Arzneimittel, rejected the claim, saying umckaloabo had been in use in Europe for more than 100 years and the company's extraction process was completely unlike the traditional one.

'Our process comprises 20 separate steps and we obtain certain ingredients specifically,' he said. This enabled less desirable ingredients to be completely removed so the drug could be customized for certain illnesses.