Industrialised North Puts Brakes on WTO Medicine
Accord Gustavo Capdevila GENEVA, Nov 29 (IPS) – Negotiators at the
World Trade Organisation (WTO) failed Friday to reach an agreement to
ensure poor countries access to essential medicines. Health activists
blame the fiasco on opposition from the United States and a handful of
other industrialised countries.
The WTO council on the Trade-Related Intellectual
Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS), entrusted with the matter of
pharmaceutical patents, ended its annual sessions this week without
finding a solution that would guarantee developing countries access to
generic medicines.
Mexican diplomat Eduardo Pérez Motta, chairman of
the TRIPS negotiations, commented that the delegations representing the
WTO member states "need time to take stock of the situation and to
consult in capitals."
As a result, the chances for an agreement
facilitating poor nations' access to medications depends on the WTO
General Council, the institution's maximum body when the ministerial
conferences are not meeting. The Council is scheduled to meet Dec 10-12
in Geneva.
In a declaration issued by the ministerial conference
held last year in Doha, the Qatar capital, the WTO established health as
a priority over trade and resolved that the mechanisms for exporting
low-cost pharmaceuticals to poor countries should be resolved by the end
of 2002.
Negotiations took place throughout the year to
determine how countries of the developing South with their own
pharmaceutical industries could supply other poor countries with the
medications necessary to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other
epidemic diseases.
In early November, just when an agreement on the
issue seemed imminent, hurdles emerged because the countries home to the
big transnational drug companies -- such as the United States and
Switzerland -- filed objections that went so far as to question the Doha
Declaration's take on trade and health.
Three non-governmental organisations, Oxfam
International (based in Britain), Consumer Project on Technology (United
States), and the Malaysia-based Third World Network are blaming
industrialised countries for the failure of the talks.
The United States, Japan, Canada, European Union and
Switzerland demand that any solution to the problem of access to
medications should be limited to those needed for only a few infectious
diseases, complain the three NGOs. Some of these wealthy countries also
attempted to exclude from the agreement vaccinations, medical equipment
and even simple first-aid kits destined for poor countries that cannot
manufacture these items themselves.
The three organisations charge that the position
taken by the industrialised countries was "dictated by the
ambitions of the big pharmaceutical companies."
Another demand from the North seeks to divide the
developing world into different categories for the application of the
pharmaceutical access policies. But Argentine negotiator Alfredo
Chiaradia stressed that the Doha Declaration does not establish any sort
of distinction between developing nations.
The African delegations to the WTO agreed that the
negotiations had turned "disappointing and frustrating", and
that it is unlikely that Africa will be able to resolve its severe
public health problems, particularly HIV/AIDS, through this channel.
Africa's stance has the backing of the rest of the developing world.
Brazil, which along with India pushed the issue of
access to low-cost medication through the WTO ministerial conference in
Doha, threw its support behind Africa. Brazilian representative Antonio
de Aguiar Patriota stressed that "at this moment Brazil is entirely
behind the Africans," adding that a period for reflection might be
best given the current circumstances of the WTO talks.
Aguiar Patriota commented that the negotiations
suffered a setback in recent weeks that had cast doubt over the Doha
Declaration's Paragraph 6, which consecrates that health comes before
trade.
There are proposals on the table that would limit the
diseases covered by the agreement and would introduce conditions for
defining who the beneficiaries would be, said the Brazilian diplomat.
Such demands from the industrialised countries "hardly seem
justifiable," he said.
Oxfam International's Celine Charveriat said her
organisation was "happy to see that developing countries have stood
firm in the face of U.S. attempts to rewrite the Doha Declaration."
Despite the setbacks, she expressed hope that "we can still reach
an effective solution before the end of the year so people have access
to drugs and that their right to health is respected."
Meanwhile, the U.S. representative, Linnet F. Deily,
asserted that her country is "committed to supporting poor
countries in having access to drugs to fight epidemics."
