Inter Press Service - November 9, 2001
Farah Khan

This is the view of three international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who complain that the developing world's demands for changes to TRIPS, especially in the health sphere, have not been adequately captured in the meeting's draft text - the key document that guides the trade negotiations.

Essentially, developing countries want a declaration that recognises the primacy of public health concerns over those of intellectual property.

Kenya, like many developing countries, had a high incidence of child mortality through pneumonia. The best-selling patent drug, Zithromax, costs as much in Kenya as it does in wealthier countries but TRIPS prevents the import of generics from manufacturers like those in India who retail the antibiotic at one fifth the patent price.

"Medicines aren't Barbie Dolls or CDs - they are a matter of life or death for millions of people," said Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), or Doctors Without Frontiers.

To flesh out the principle of the primacy of health over patents and profits, said the developing country lobby at its September meeting, there should also be an agreement, which confirms and extends the right to undertake parallel drug imports.

They should also be able to issue compulsory licences to both domestic manufacturers or to third parties, where there is no local manufacturing capacity.

Such safeguard measures are already allowed in TRIPS but when developing countries try to exercise the safeguard, they are often challenged by pharmaceutical companies or by other member governments.

South Africa, Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Thailand have all come under pressure from the United States to tighten their implementation of TRIPS. In some instances, claimed Oxfam - leading British charity - they had been threatened with trade sanctions.

In the WTO negotiating document - a work that aims to reach consensus by balancing demands - there is only one paragraph, which refers to TRIPS. It states that TRIPS will be implemented and interpreted "in a manner supportive of public health". This was not good enough, said the NGOs.

"This is a skeleton of what developing countries asked for. We want to know 'Where is the meat?' It's been butchered," said MSF representative Ellen't Hoen.

"We are not naive campaigners," she added, saying that as doctors they were confronted daily with the inequities of TRIPS.

MSF, for example, runs a clinic in a township in Cape Town, South Africa where one in four babies who comes in is HIV- positive. A treatment programme of lifesaving patented AIDS drugs costs an annual 2300 U.S. dollars per person, while a course of generics was one tenth of the price.

"TRIPS and public health could be the deal that makes or breaks the Doha meeting. We had hoped that the issue of access to the patented anti-anthrax drug, Cipro, would make rich country governments more sensitive to the needs in developing countries," said Oxfam's senior policy advisor Michael Bailey. Delegates said TRIPS was not as much of a deal-breaker as the annual 350 billion U.S. dollars, which the European Union (EU) provided to its agricultural industries. But that it was a key demand of countries in sub-Saharan Africa who are beginning to feel the burden of higher health costs from the HIV/AIDS pandemic. There are suggestions that the European Union is more willing than the United States to move on the TRIPS agreement.

The WTO says that TRIPS is a balanced agreement. "It attempts to strike a balance between the long term social objective of providing incentives for future inventions and creation, and the short term objective of allowing people to use existing inventions and creations."

By doing so, argues the WTO, private rights bring social benefits by encouraging the development of new drugs, for example.

Ahead of the Doha meeting, the United States went on a Public Relations (PR) offensive, offering, among others, to exempt South Africa from the TRIPS provisions for five years. It is likely the TRIPS implementation deadline for the 49 least developed countries will be extended to 2006.

But the NGOs warned that such concessions should be viewed with circumspection because firstly, it could draw attention away from the failure of the WTO's governing council to adequately reflect the demands of developing countries on TRIPS.

Secondly, warned Cecilia Oh of Third World Network, it could be an attempt to drive a wedge between the African bloc and third world countries with a generic drug manufacturing capability like Brazil and India.

Civil society gathered at Doha said a way-out was premised on three issues. The first was that the declaration was more explicit on TRIPS implementation being less important than public health concerns.

Secondly, there should be a review into the health and development impact of TRIPS and thirdly, that pressure on developing countries to implement "unduly restrictive patent measures" should end.
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