By Patrick Jaramogi

A Government plan to pass the Bio-safety and Bio-technology Bill without farmers input will hurt the incomes of farmers, Members of Parliament and Civil Society Organisations disclosed.

The bill that is set to be tabled in parliament next month seeks to formalize the use of Genetically Modified Organisms/seeds GMOs.

Uganda is one of those countries that are quickly adopting this technology with field trials for GMO banana, maize, cotton, potatoes and rice currently ongoing at Namulonge and Kawanda Research Institutes.

Uganda has developed a National Biosafety and Biotechnology Bill 2008 and there is a draft Biosafety and Biotechnology Bill Draft 2008 yet to be presented to the parliament. This bill when turned into a law is meant to guide the introduction and use of GMOs in the country.

But MPs and CSOs meeting at Grand Imperial Hotel in Kampala observed that the bill which they also said had been shielded from the public will not address the escalating food prices.

With the world population currently at the 7 billion, many countries especially in Africa are faced with the serious threat of people dying from hunger.

Uganda alone is expected to hit the 50million mark by 2025. One of the solutions being advanced to deal with the threat of hunger is the advancement of Genetically Modified Organisms/seeds (GMOs) created through a new technology called Genetic Engineering.

“It is very unfortunate that even we (MPs) haven’t had the chance to peruse through the draft bill. This law will affect farmers who are the backbone of this economy, said, Matthias Kasamba MP for Kakutu- (Rakai) . “A lot of things are happening behind our backs with limited access by the public,” he added.

The Southern and Eastern African Trade Information and Negotiations Institute-Uganda (SEATINI-Uganda) country director Jane Nalunga said Uganda needs to learn how to deal with the market before the bill is passed into law.

“Most NGOs, farmers, consumers and even the policy makers are not aware of the challenges arising from the use of GMOs like the fact that seeds produced through this technology are patented and their introduction is subjected to Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) that denies farmers the right to save, replant, share or propagate seeds without authority of the patentee,” she said.

Eng. Robert Kafeero (Nakifuuma-Mukono) the Vice Chairperson Parliamentary Committee on Science and Technology said the bill will only be allowed to pass the floor of Parliament if it has meaning to the farmers.

“We shall cause meaningful change to the bill before it is enacted. We are concerned about the bio-safety issues,” he said.
He said creating seed security for small-holder farmers is very central in ensuring food security.

Erina Namugambe (Mubende) said under the NAADs programme, farmers are given terminator seeds which are not sustainable. ‘Farmers are not reaping much from the GMO seeds. They are not earning from their produce. This bill should seek to help the farmers more,” she said.

The meeting is a collaboration between with Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (PELUM-Uganda), Action Aid International Uganda (AAIU), Volunteer Efforts for Development Concerns (VEDCO.

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) which is being done through Genetic Engineering (GE). The technology involves the production of genetically modified crops whose seeds may not be replanted especially those with the terminator gene.

The CSOs observed that one of the effects of GE technology will be elimination of farmers’ indigenous seeds. The result will be making smallholder farmers dependant on multinational and profit driven companies for the supply of seeds.

Hence, their food production and by extension livelihoods will be controlled by these corporate companies.

Source:http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/19063-mps-query-biosafety-and-biotechnology-bill.html

By Philip Soos

26 September 2011

The magnitude and severity of preventable and treatable NCDs – diabetes, stroke, cancer and heart disease – has brought the affordability of medicines to the forefront of global public health.

 For more than a decade, a worldwide campaign has been agitating for more timely and affordable access to medicines for the world’s poor. This is because hundreds of millions of people around the world don’t have access to the medicines they require to combat and alleviate suffering from a plethora of NCDs.

 Patently obvious

One of the direct causes of the lack of affordability of pharmaceuticals is the patents system.

 Patents are a monopoly granted by the government ostensibly to promote greater levels of research and development (R&D) than would exist without some form of intervention. But the problem is that monopolistic pricing makes medicines less affordable to individuals.

 While traditional forms of protectionism such as tariffs result in markups of 20% to 30%, patents can increase medicine prices by a thousand or even ten thousand percent above market competitive prices. And monopolistic pricing is not the only hurdle to making medicines more affordable and accessible.

 It is compounded by perverse incentives for pharmaceutical companies to spend R&D on creating largely non-innovative medicines for high-income markets. Add to this, the temptation for pharmaceutical companies to withhold clinical research that indicates negative side-effects of some drugs.

 Merck knew before Vioxx was released on the market, for instance, that it substantially increased the incidence of heart attack and stroke, resulting in tens of thousands of preventable deaths in the United States.

 It’s pointless to advocate policies that result in cheaper medicines if they are defective so consumers are harmed rather than treated. But under the patent system, firms are faced with such perverse incentives that are clearly not aligned with the common good.

 All over the world

It’s wrong to assume that patents are the sole cause for lack of medicines’ affordability.

 The lack of a well-functioning public health-care systems and medicine subsidy schemes; sales taxes; poverty; government corruption; and the high cost of on-going medical treatment are also reasons why many individuals and entire populations lack timely and affordable access to pharmaceuticals.

 One of the oddities of the access to medicines campaign is that many assume only developing nations are in need of help. In fact, the affordability crisis also strikes closer to home in many of the wealthier Western nations.

 The United States, for instance, lacks a comprehensive national subsidy scheme and there’s an expectation that private insurers provide coverage alongside Medicare and Medicaid. Despite this, many millions of Americans can’t afford to purchase medicines, which are often sold at grossly inflated prices.

 Australia has one of the best medicine subsidy schemes in the world: the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). But the PBS cannot subsidize every medicine on the market for the simple reason of containing costs.

 The PBS will soon cost $10 billion and is expected to continue to grow. And even now there are instances of Australians who cannot afford unsubsidised medicines and are placed at an economic (and health) disadvantage.

 True cost

The US pharmaceutical market recently reached US$300 billion in size. It would actually only be worth approximately US$30 billion at competitive market prices.

 If medicines were priced at the cost of production under an alternative R&D system, not only would they become more afford but the budgets of government subsidy programs and charities would be able to provide greater coverage and treatment to those who need it. It’s critical for activists driving the access to medicines campaign to examine the assumptions and justifications that uphold the pharmaceutical patents system.

 They shouldn’t accept what the industry and the economics profession say in support of an R&D system that’s grossly inefficient in both economic and social terms. There are much better systems to promote research and development.

 And there’s no plausible rationale for relying on 15th century government monopolies to finance R&D – a creation from the time of the feudal guild system. Overturning pharmaceutical patents, rather than fiddling around the margins, should comprise a core focus of the access to medicines campaign.

 This will help bring our scientific and innovation research structures into the 21st century, and most importantly, improve the affordability of medicines at a time when the world is facing an epidemic of non-communicable diseases.

  Source: The Conversation

 http://theconversation.edu.au/blueprint-for-making-medicines-more-affordable-for-everyone-3503