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Consensus Remains Elusive as WTO Ministerial Looms

WTO members are struggling to find consensus on a host of topics as the 15-17 December ministerial meeting draws nearer. Despite a plethora of proposals on possible non-Doha work, ranging from least developed country (LDC) accessions through to humanitarian food aid, deep-seated divisions between members continue to stymie progress on even a low-ambition outcome for the gathering, sources say.

Amid growing uncertainty over whether trade ministers will be able to reach agreement on a joint ministerial declaration, with one official calling it a “more and more remote possibility,” some trade officials told Bridges that the conference might now aim merely to produce a ‘chair’s statement’, describing some of the issues that ministers had discussed.

Although less authoritative than a collective communiqué by members, the tactic could allow the global trade body to skirt some of the disagreements that have emerged in the wake of countries’ recognition that the Doha Round of trade talks remains at an impasse.

Another option being considered was a “chair’s summary,” one official told Bridges; like the statement, a summary would be taken on the General Council chair’s responsibility. The last WTO Ministerial Conference, held in Geneva in 2009, also produced a chair’s summary at the end of the event.

A chair’s statement, however, could also have more binding elements in terms of “soft decisions,” the official explained.

However, a chair’s statement “might give the impression that ministers didn’t lend their full weight to the process,” one Geneva delegate acknowledged.

Plan for Doha remains unclear

While the ministerial meeting is intended to address both the WTO’s regular work programme and the future of the Doha talks, ongoing controversy over the latter question reportedly led to tense discussions between major economic players at the G-20 summit in Cannes last week (see related article in this issue).

The US, India, China and Brazil haggled at length over the precise wording of the final communiqué for the Cannes event, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

In Geneva, the same countries have also been locked in discussions over draft wording to describe what should be done about Doha, as part of a group of around 15 ambassadors that have been meeting on a weekly basis for some months now. While the group had reportedly reached broad agreement on language recently, sources said that this had encountered difficulties over new proposals to agree on a work programme for 2012.

“We should put [Doha] in the deep freeze for two years” said one official, who argued that negotiators could then return to the draft texts that were tabled earlier this year once the political climate had improved (see Bridges Weekly, 27 April 2011).

Others cautioned that, unless negotiators keep talking, the progress achieved so far could be lost completely. “2012 risks becoming a lost year” said one official, who argued in favour of a work programme of discussions on trade issues.

The language of the G-20 communiqué did provide some guidance, one developing country source noted; however, “how to operationalise” this guidance is where the tough part comes in.

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy is continuing to hold consultations with members on how to proceed with the Doha process, the same official added.

Lack of consensus on non-Doha proposals

With little consensus on the non-Doha proposals that have been tabled to date, the chair of the General Council has told delegates they should continue to seek agreement on issues for the ministerial – despite an unofficial deadline of 2 November by which members were supposed to have achieved consensus on their proposals and then tabled those items for the meeting’s agenda.

Individual committees can continue discussing issues under their remits in the weeks ahead of the next General Council meeting, scheduled for 1-2 December, delegates said.

The African Group has also submitted a set of proposals, including for a ‘standstill provision’ that would freeze domestic support for cotton at historically-low current levels. In addition, net-food importing developing countries have argued in favour of a work programme on food price volatility. The African Group has also proposed providing greater flexibility to least-developed and developing countries that wish to join the WTO.

The G-90, which includes the African Group, the ACP (African, Caribbean, and Pacific) Group, and least developed countries, is also bringing a proposal on mainstreaming development within the scope of the Committee on Trade and Development.

A cross-regional group of countries has also tabled a proposal to exempt humanitarian food purchases from agricultural export restrictions, based on language originally agreed by the G-20 (see Bridges Weekly, 2 November 2011).

Consultations on these proposals are expected to continue in the weeks ahead. The General Council Chair, Ambassador Yonov Frederick Agah of Nigeria, is also holding consultations regarding subjects for “soft decisions,” or areas where ministers might provide political guidance, a Geneva-based official told Bridges. These discussions will focus on the importance of the multilateral trading system, along with trade and development.

Russia, government procurement appear on track

Currently, the ministerial conference is widely expected to approve Russia’s long-standing bid to join the WTO; the formal Working Party on Russian accession is scheduled to meet on 10 and 11 November to finalise remaining technical issues. Sources familiar with the talks note that, while there are a fair amount of technical details that are being discussed, there is no issue that seems unlikely to be resolved.

The announcement last week that Russia and its neighbour Georgia had reached a compromise deal resolving their disagreements on trade monitoring along their shared border removed the last major hurdle remaining in Russia’s 18-year accession process (see Bridges Weekly, 2 November 2011). The compromise was largely made possible via the mediation of Switzerland, which trade sources note was “instrumental” in achieving an agreement.

Last month, the chair of the WTO committee on government procurement also announced that the 42 countries currently finalising the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) talks were quickly approaching the finish line (see Bridges Weekly, 19 October 2011). Unlike the Doha Round of trade talks, the GPA does not extend to the entire WTO membership, applying only to those countries that choose to sign on to the process.

Other countries are also working on acceding to the agreement, notably China. Another meeting of the committee on government procurement is scheduled for 15 November.

Apart from these, “the number of decisions that members take will be small,” one delegate observed, adding wryly that the meeting risks becoming “the least successful ministerial since the last one.”

TRIPS non-violation, e-commerce return to ministerial agenda

Ministers are also expected to take decisions on e-commerce and non-violation complaints under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement; both of these topics have featured regularly on previous ministerial agendas.

In the case of e-commerce, ministers will decide whether to extend a moratorium on tariffs on goods sold for download online, such as songs; a ban on these tariffs has been in place since the 1998 Ministerial Conference.

TRIPS non-violation complaints concern whether countries should be allowed to bring WTO disputes on the grounds that the spirit of the organisation’s intellectual property rules has been breached, rather than just the letter of the TRIPS Agreement. A five-year prohibition on such complaints was put in place at the WTO’s founding in 1995, and has been repeatedly extended at ministerial conferences ever since.

Source: (ICTSD) International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development

http://ictsd.org/i/news/bridgesweekly/117966/

Copyright law and education materials: can the two get along?

By Henry Zakumumpa

7th/11/2011

Thousands of school children in rural Uganda are already disadvantaged. Many schools are without libraries and those with libraries have stocks that are outdated with a few over-used and mutilated copies.

It is not uncommon to find there are only a few copies of current text books shared among hundreds of pupils. The cost of one new primary school text book is often the equivalent of a one-month salary for a primary school teacher in Uganda.

Take the case of a remote primary school in Butahe village in Mbarara District, a government-aided school located in south western Uganda; about 400 kilometers from the capital Kampala .There are only two mathematics text books for the 500-plus school population.

Many pupils and teachers use photocopying to get around the hurdle of scarcity of school text books, a practise which is even widespread in Uganda’s burgeoning universities. But that too is no longer an option –at least, a legal option. Photocopying a text book could actually land you in jail.

Under the Copyright and Neighboring Rights Act 2006 it is a criminal offence to photocopy copyrighted material such as school text books. These are mainly published by multinational publishers such as Longman and Macmillan, although local publishers such as Fountain Publishers and MK Publishers are increasing their market share in Uganda, especially for school text books.

“Ugandans don’t have a culture of buying books. Even among those who can afford. For example, a locally-published book costs only 18,000 shs (U$ 7) but students will still want to photocopy. We need to change mindsets,’’ says Dr Ronald Kakungulu who is conducting research commissioned by human rights NGO, the Center for Health and Human Rights Development (CEHURD) on the impact Uganda’s copyright law is having on the right of access to educational materials.

However, the copyright law permits some limited form of photocopying for educational purposes under a vague provision known as ‘fair use’, which permits photocopying only portions of a text book. Also, the ‘flexibilities’ in the copyright law allows the education minister to grant a license for vital education materials to circumvent the rigidities of copyright law.

For many years Ugandan schools and students have been buying Indian-printed versions of Western text books, which are much cheaper. When I was a secondary student of English literature, about 15-years-ago, we could scarcely afford brand-new copies of set texts such as Macbeth and A Man For All Seasons and got by through purchasing cheaper Indian-printed versions. Yet this option is not legally available to current secondary students in Uganda.

This practice of buying cheaper copies of copyrighted books is called ‘parallel importation’. This was legally permitted before the coming into force of the new Ugandan copyright law but is now outlawed.

But the desperate shortage of school text books in the average Ugandan primary school such as the one in Butahe, Mbarara district is as a result of a myriad of factors, which range from intellectual property rights issues to centralized educational material procurement delays.

‘’School curriculums are unstable and keep changing all the time, which makes it expensive for book publishers in Uganda since they have to make new publications too regularly, ‘’ says Peter Kibuuka, a representative of Pearson Longman.

“To be fair, looking exclusively at right of access to educational materials in isolation of the necessary balancing act of protecting publishers who make enormous investments in publishing books would be unsustainable,” counsels Charles Batambuze, executive secretary of the Uganda National Book Trust.

At a workshop organized by the CEHURD in collaboration with Uganda National Book Trust at Hotel Africana in Kampala last Thursday (3 November 2011), stakeholders met to discuss the relationship between Ugandan copyright law and the right to access educational materials. The discussion was chaired by Moses Mulumba, the executive director of CEHURD, who informed workshop participants that low- income countries need not despair and can exercise ‘flexibilities’ under international trade law, which allows for countries to access copyrighted educational materials under a grace period granted until July 2013.

‘’Even reforming our copy right law in Uganda alone is not going to be enough because of East African regional integration efforts. Laws made at the East African level supersede Ugandan laws,’’ said Moses Mulumba.

On efforts to broaden access to education materials, Professor Ikoja Odongo, who attended the CEHURD workshop, said ‘‘we need to take action and not just keep on talking and talking about access to educational materials”.

Professor Ogongo’s call needs to be heeded if school children in remote Ugandan primary schools are to freely access school text books and get an education – a right guaranteed under the 1995 Uganda constitution.

Source: KC team

http://www.keycorrespondents.org/2011/11/07/copy-right-law-and-education-materials-can-the-two-get-along/

Will the UN backtrack on accessible medicine?

By James Love

A plan to create ‘cancer prizes’ would eliminate patent monopolies for cancer drugs, and instead grant prizes to innovators who create new medicines.

On September 19, the United Nations will convene a high-level meeting to consider the “international aspect of public health” for non-communicable diseases (NCDs), with a particular focus on the social and economic impacts for developing countries.

The UN has been widely praised for undertaking this initiative, and there is considerable support for giving attention to the growing burden of cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other non-communicable diseases, not only in high-income countries, but everywhere. However, some of the issues are controversial, including those relating to intellectual property rights for new medicines, diagnostics and medical devices.

Last week, details of the negotiations were leaked that reveal the UN declaration on NCDs will be used to attack a ten-year-old agreement on intellectual property rights and public health. The controversy involves the November 14, 2001, World Trade Organisation (WTO) Doha Declaration on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and public health. This landmark agreement was agreed upon in Doha, Qatar, during an emotionally charged and tense ministerial meeting of the WTO.

Among other things, the Doha Declaration effectively gave WTO members more flexibility in designing patent and other intellectual property rules, and said that WTO members “should” implement their laws “in a manner supportive of WTO members’ right to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all”.

This agreement was also the basis for subsequent changes in WTO rules on patents that allowed medicines to be exported to countries that lack local manufacturing capacity, and that deferred obligations to enforce pharmaceutical patents in the world’s least developed countries.

In 2001, big drug companies bitterly fought the Doha Declaration, but the Bush Administration, reeling from 9/11 and a subsequent scare over access to medicines to treat anthrax, wanted to build bridges with the international community, and so accepted strong language on public health.

The Doha Declaration came about during a period of great concern over access to patented AIDS drugs. During both the 2001 negotiation and a follow-up WTO negotiation in 2002-2003, Pfizer, Merck, Abbott, and other big drug companies and their lobby groups – such as the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations, and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations – tried to narrow the Doha Declaration to AIDS and a handful of other infectious diseases, or to exceptional public health emergencies.

The PhRMA position was decisively rejected in the WTO negotiations. Legally, the 2001 Doha Declaration, and subsequent amendments to TRIPS, applies to any disease. But in practice, the perceptions are as important as the legal reality. By continuing to assert that the Doha Declaration is in fact limited in various ways, US and European trade negotiators have tried to discourage the granting of compulsory licenses on patents for high-priced drugs for cancer and other non-communicable diseases.

The term “compulsory license” is used to describe cases in which governments or courts set aside the exclusive rights of a patent, and allow others to use inventions, normally in return for a royalty payment to the patent owner. In such cases, the patent is no longer an absolute monopoly to use the invention, but does ensure that patent owners are paid when the inventions are used by third parties.

The use of compulsory licenses are as old as the patent system itself (a 1474 Venetian statute and an English law passed in 1623 both sanctioned compulsory licenses), and are used in a wide range of cases. While maintaining an active trade policy to prevent developing countries from using compulsory licenses for patents on medicines, at home the United States has used compulsory licenses to expand access to patented inventions to treat cancer, diagnose the Hepatitis C virus, manufacture contact lenses, and treat aortic valve heart disease.

The US has also recently twice granted compulsory licenses to Microsoft for patents on features used in Microsoft Office, and granted compulsory patent licenses to DirectTV, Toyota and other technology firms. The European Union has used compulsory licenses on Microsoft Windows technologies, and Italy has issued several compulsory licenses for pharmaceutical inventions, including one product used to restore hair loss.

When the UN convenes on September 19, it will complete its work on an outcomes resolution. Currently, the European Commission and the White House Office for the United States Trade Representative (USTR) have blocked any mention of the 2001 Doha Declaration, although a “compromise” text makes references to “the full use of TRIPS flexibilities”. The EU trade negotiator believes that the lack of reference to the Doha Declaration will allow them to assert that the 2001 agreement does not apply to non-communicable diseases. Many public health groups have urged delegates to fix this, by restoring the references to the Doha Declaration that the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Trade and the USTR have opposed.

However things play out at the UN high-level meeting on non-communicable diseases, battles over access to new cancer drugs will heat up. In India, an August 30, 2011, request for a compulsory license was filed for patents on the cancer drug Sorafenib (developed and marketed by Bayer and Onyx Pharmaceuticals as Nexavar). The India generics firm CIPLA is expected to soon launch less-expensive generic versions of several drugs, including Trastuzumab (sold by Roche under the trade name Herceptin), a super-expensive but effective treatment for women with a certain type of breast cancer.

Developing countries cannot improve access to cancer drugs unless they grant more compulsory licenses on patents, or undertake more fundamental and radical changes in the way research and development (R&D) for cancer drugs is financed.

Prize funds

In 2009, Bangladesh, Bolivia and Suriname asked the World Health Organisation to hold a meeting to consider an entirely new way to address paying for R&D for cancer drugs. Rather than depend upon 20-year patent monopolies, they proposed de-linking drug prices from R&D incentives. All monopolies for cancer drugs would be eliminated, so that drugs could be purchased at generic prices. To reward R&D, countries would put a percentage of their cancer treatment budgets into new innovation prize funds.

This proposal was entitled, “Prizes as a Reward Mechanism for New Cancer Treatments and Vaccines in Developing Countries. It was based upon ideas first put forth by Thai public health officials, who were struggling to expand access to newer cancer drugs, but were under intensive pressure from the US government to leave the patent monopoly intact.

Under the cancer prize approach, access to expensive drugs would give health authorities greater incentives to invest in the diagnosis and treatments for cancer. As outlays on cancer health care rise, countries would allocate more money for innovation prize rewards. Countries with higher incomes and greater investments in care would contribute more.

The cancer prize fund approach is also being considered in Europe. There are huge income differences between Eastern Europe and Northern Europe, and it is much easier to de-link incentives from drug prices than to manage a system of negotiating affordable prices country by country.

At first, the cancer prize fund proposal was so controversial that the World Health Organisation at first refused to publish it on its website. And in 2010, the proposal was ignored by a WHO expert group on R&D financing. But after the first WHO expert group was criticised for its pro-industry report, a second group of experts was appointed, and the cancer prize fund approach is now being re-evaluated.

The UN is being asked to backtrack from an important agreement to put “access to medicine for all” at the centre of trade policy. This comes at the same time that the United States and Europe are involved in all sorts of regional and bilateral trade negotiations that ratchet up intellectual property protections, making it harder to obtain affordable generic medicines. Inequalities of access to medicine and healthcare are already shocking, and these trade pressures just make things worse. Negotiators at the UN meetings, public health groups, politicians, and the public need to push back and demand changes in global trade negotiations.

We need to move away from lobbyist-driven policies that pit innovation against access, to a new trade policy that reconciles both objectives. Eyes will turn next to the recommendations of the World Health Organsation’s Consultative Expert Working Group on R&D, to see if this can jump-start a new direction in global negotiations – one that puts people and human rights at the center of patent policy.

Source: Al jazeera

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/09/201191492714279493.html

Thousands on HIV treatment in Uganda risk imminent HIV drugs ban

By Henry Zakumumpa

August 17, 2011

Thousands of people enrolled on antiretroviral treatment in Uganda risk early death unless a grace period placed on the manufacture of generic drugs imposed under Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), an international trade law, is extended.

The critically important Industrial Properties Bill, which makes provision for exercising the flexibilities of the TRIPS agreement, including extending the grace period of manufacturing generic drugs, has been shelved by the Ugandan national parliament, putting the lives of thousands of Uganda at grave risk come 2016.

Generic drugs refer to medicines manufactured by pharmaceutical companies who are not the original manufacturers. Under the World Trade Organization (WTO)’s TRIPS agreement, to which Uganda is a signatory, poor countries were given a transitional period to manufacture HIV drugs using the original formulas of mainly Western pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and Smith Kline Beecham.

For developing countries such as India, the ban on the manufacture of generic HIV drugs came into force in 2005 under the TRIPS agreement of the WTO, whereas a similar ban on poorer developing countries such as Uganda will take effect in 2016 unless Uganda passes a national law that allows for extension of this deadline. This includes drugs to treat HIV, malaria and tuberculosis.

Denis Kibira of HEPS-Uganda,a health-rights advocacy NGO, says all HIV drugs used in Uganda are manufactured in-country or in India, under an international intellectual property law that permits drug manufacturers in developing countries to manufacture pharmaceutical products that imitate those originally made by Western pharmaceutical companies on account of public health emergencies.

In 2006, CIPLA, a prominent Indian pharmaceutical company, entered into a joint venture with Quality Chemicals of Uganda to manufacture generic drugs previously produced in India whose grace period under TRIPS regulations expired in 2005.

‘’Unless the Ugandan parliament passes the Industrial Properties Bill, which it has currently shelved, the permission to manufacture cheap generic ARV drugs will cease in 2016 with thousands affected since Quality Chemicals manufactures generic AIDS drugs’’ said Moses Mulumba, Executive Director of the Centre for Health Human Rights and Development (CEHURD), a healthcare access and advocacy NGO.

With the expiry of the TRIPS grace period, the alternative for Uganda will be to buy antiretrovirals (ARVs) from Western manufacturers at prices beyond the reach of the average Ugandan ARV user.

The process of reforming Ugandan laws to bring them in line with the TRIPS agreement started back in 2000 with the Copyright and Neighboring Rights Acts being enacted in 2006 and 2010 respectively.

According to the Uganda AIDS Commission, there are 135,000 new HIV infections in Uganda. This adds to the already rising number of those in need of ARV treatment. Currently, only half of those in need of ARV treatment in Ugandan have it.

The TRIPS agreement threatens to dramatically reverse the gains achieved in access to ARVs to pre-2004 levels where only a few paying patients could afford HIV treatment.

Source: KC team

http://www.keycorrespondents.org/2011/08/17/thousands-on-hiv-treatment-in-uganda-risk-imminent-hiv-drugs-ban/

The Patient Is More Important Than The Patent

By patience Akumu

21 September 2011

 ‘Production of quality affordable generic medicines is key in access to life saving /life-extending treatments for people who need it, and narrow national economic interests should not take precedence over a global commitment to save lives of People Living With HIV (PLHIV)…’. This message was brought out clearly at the recently concluded 10th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (10th ICAAP), held in Busan, Korea.

 The discounted price for life saving first line AIDS treatment has been brought down from the 2000 whopping price of $10,000 per person per year to the current $60, thanks to the Indian generic drug manufacturing companies. But Europe and other developed countries are pursuing aggressive trade policies that are likely to reverse the process. The European Union (EU) is negotiating with India, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, and the US is involved in talks on Trans Pacific Partnership Agreements with Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Vietnam.  These Free Trade Agreements (FTA) demand higher level of Intellectual Property protection expanding monopolies of multinational pharmaceutical companies and threaten the ability of countries to manufacture or import ARV generic medicines, thus restricting access to life saving medicines to millions of people in the developing world. To add insult to injury, the recent alarming spate of buy offs by multinational companies of Indian firms manufacturing generic medicines, is likely to push up drug prices manifold in the Indian market in the near future.

 At a session organized at the 10th ICAAP, by Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Kajal Bhardwaj, Independent Legal Researcher on HIV, health and human rights from India informed that “India is a key drug supplier to the world with 92% of patients on ARVs in low- and middle-income countries using generic drugs coming mostly from India. Also 67 % of medicines exports from India go to developing countries, and 75-80% of all medicines distributed by the International Dispensary Association are manufactured in India. However, in its FTA with India, EU is asking for strong Intellectual Property Protection which could stop the flow of affordable and life-saving medicines for millions of patients in developing countries.”

 Kajal further added: “As of now, every member country of the World Trade Organization has to implement the agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which requires countries to grant 20 year patents on medicines, but it is up to countries to decide whether they will have strict standards or not in granting patents, thus prohibiting evergreening—a practice of pharmaceutical companies of making small changes to old medicines to extend patent life. But developed countries are now demanding inclusion of ever-greening of patents and  TRIPS+ (data exclusivity) provisions in which one may have to give patent for longer than 20 years (patent term extension) . Contrary to TRIPS requirement of only data protection, data exclusivity (DE) mandates that the generic cannot rely on the originator’s clinical trial results for 5-11 years and would have to repeat the clinical trials if it wants to be approved in the DE period, or wait for 5-11 years before it can be registered and reach patients.”

The impact of DE has been devastating in countries like (i) Jordan where data exclusivity has delayed the introduction of cheaper generic versions of 79% of medicines even though there is no patent on them, and over 25% of the Ministry of Health’s budget is now spent on buying medicines; (ii) Colombia which would require an extra US$1.5billion to be spent on medicines every year by 2030. If this is not spent, Colombians will have to reduce their medicine consumption by 44% by 2030; (iii) Guatemala where there have been price differences of up to 845000% in the same therapeutic class of medicines.

 According to a Korean study, the extension of patent term is likely to cost the Korean National Health Insurance Corporation US $529m for extending drug patents for 3 years and US $757m if it has to agree to a 4 yr extension as proposed under the FTA negotiations with the United States.

 John Rock, adviser with APN + (Asia Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS) voiced his concern at the Community Forum– “the community is concerned about the free trade agreement (FTA) currently under negotiation between India and European Union, which threatens the production of generic medicines which will among others affect HIV patients. The EU-India draft FTA, as it stands, places trade interests over human rights, there is an immediate need for global action to ensure affordable access to treatment.”

 The Inter Faith pre-conference participants also agreed that ‘Universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support are also being influenced by unjust trade agreements. Life saving medication and diagnostic procedures should not be at the mercy of   pharmaceutical companies particularly in the knowledge that ARVs are effective in preventing HIV transmission.   Intellectual property rights regimes need to address the survival needs of people who are affected and infected by life threatening diseases.

  Dr JVR Prasada Rao, senior adviser to UNAIDS Executive Director exhorted the developed countries not to bind developing economies to inflexible TRIPS provisions which are counterproductive to Universal access for PLHIV.

 He agreed that “FTA TRIPS agreements and their actual operation at country level have become serious impediments to affordable HIV/AIDS treatment. Added to this is the new slogan of anti-counterfeiting, which confuses generic drugs with counterfeit medicines of spurious quality. On one side we say that millions of PLHIV need to be provided with affordable treatment, while on the other side we throttle supply of good quality but cheap generic drugs.”

 The UN special rapportuer on health has also agreed that “As FTAs can directly affect access to medicines, there is a need for countries to assess multilateral and bilateral trade agreements for potential health violations and all stages of negotiations should remain open and transparent. International negotiations on issues related to intellectual property rights and health should be coherent in their approaches to the promotion of public health.”

 Let us not forget the spirit of the Doha Declaration which states that “We affirm that the (TRIPS) Agreement can and should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of WTO Members’ right to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all.” (CNS)

Source: The Observer

http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15138&Itemid=68