WTO agrees to medicine export plan
Published: September 6, 2003
The World Trade Organization agreed yesterday to let impoverished nations import cheap copies of patented medicines needed to fight killer diseases.
Member nations had approved the idea in principle Thursday night but kept haggling over an accompanying statement meant to address some pharmaceutical companies’ concerns that their patents would be exploited.
But numerous African delegations pleaded with the diplomats to make a deal. They said in a joint statement that 8,480 people had died unnecessarily in Africa from HIV/AIDS and other diseases since the talks stalled Thursday.
“This will absolutely save millions of lives that would be lost without it,” Faizel Ismail, South Africa’s permanent representative at the World Trade Organization, said in an interview from Geneva.
The breakthrough came early last week when the United States agreed to the original plan it rejected last December.
Backed by the powerful U.S. pharmaceutical lobby, the Bush administration had prevented the trade organization from adopting the measure, saying it should be restricted to a handful of diseases and limited to certain countries. The European Union and Switzerland, the other two delegations representing advanced pharmaceutical companies, had accepted the proposal.
Nations from the developing world pointed out that without an agreement, there was little hope for success at talks in the current trade round scheduled to begin in Cancun, Mexico, in September.
Last week, the United States accepted the initial proposal but included the demand that such generic medicines could be imported to cure any life-threatening disease, so long as it was a public health emergency.
“The final piece of the jigsaw has fallen into place,” said Supachai Panitchpakdi, director general of the trade organization. “It proves once and for all that the organization can handle humanitarian as well as trade concerns.”
Several delegates said they were moved by the speeches made by Panitchpakdi as well as African delegates who argued that 2.4 million Africans had already died from AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis since the agreement was first rejected last December.
The United States, however, only agreed to the accord after it won acceptance of an additional statement setting out measures to ensure that countries would not take advantage of it and reap commercial profits rather than meet public health needs.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said the negotiators struck “the right balance between addressing the needs of the poorest countries while ensuring intellectual property protections that foster the future development of lifesaving drugs.”
Groups campaigning to give poor people better access to lifesaving drugs said the deal is wrapped in so much red tape that governments will be unable to use it to get sufficient supplies of cheap medicine.
“Today’s deal was designed to offer comfort to the U.S. and the Western pharmaceutical industry,” said Ellen ‘t Hoen of the medical-aid group Doctors Without Borders. “Unfortunately it offers little comfort for poor patients. Global patent rules will continue to drive up the price of medicines.”
The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations called the final agreement balanced.
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