TORONTO, Oct 20 (AFP) - Health groups, including Doctors Without Borders, pressed Canada on Monday to broaden the scope of imminent changes to its patent laws to allow the export of generic AIDS drugs to developing nations.

Ottawa wants to be the first industrialized country to make good on an agreement, reached by the 146 World Trade Organization (WTO) member nations in late August in Geneva, to furnish low-priced medications to developing nations.

For now, the details of a Canadian bill are being hammered out.

"If Canada is going to lead on this issue then it must get it right," said Doctor James Orbinski, of Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres), in a teleconference.

"What we need to see is clear actions within proposed changes to Canada's Patent Legislation Act that enable -- rather than hobble -- real change on global health issues," he said, noting that two billion people in the developing world have little or no access to essential medicine.

"There is a risk today that Canada's proposed changes may move in the direction of limiting the scope of disease to a small number of diseases under very particular emergency conditions. This is no small detail," he said.

Richard Elliot of Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network agreed.

"If Canada were to amend its patent legislation to take full advantage of the August 30 decision of the WTO, it could do so in a way that is open-ended and does not just apply to specific diseases or to emergency situations and it would not, in any way, be ahead of any international consensus," he said.

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