Inter Press Service - November 1, 2002
Emad Mekay

Doctors Without Borders, also know as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), is warning that the United States is pressing countries from Central America, the Caribbean and Latin America to accept trade standards for pharmaceuticals that far exceed requirements set by the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The United States, Canada, and 32 other countries started talks Friday in Ecuador's capital as a step towards creating the controversial Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a bloc that would extend from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego on the southern tip of South America.

MSF says that by attempting to absolutely protect the "private intellectual property" involved in developing drugs, U.S. negotiators could be working to weaken other countries' ability to correct patent abuses and to introduce the competition that leads to cheaper generic drugs.

Rachel Cohen, U.S. liaison for the MSF Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, says that by proposing provisions in Quito that go beyond WTO standards and undermining "the spirit and letter of the Doha Declaration" (where those standards were set), the United States is breaking its promises.

"Less than one year ago in Doha, all 142 WTO members, including the U.S. and Canada, reaffirmed the right of countries to take all available measures to promote access to medicines for all, and now the U.S. is using regional trade agreements to chip away at these hard-won gains," said Cohen in a statement.

Washington's negotiators are seeking to limit generic competition, the most effective tool that developing countries have for driving down prices of essential medicines, says MSF, by dramatically limiting the circumstances under which a country can issue a compulsory license - approval to allow a generic drug in the market even though the company holding the patent does not agree.

Compulsory licensing allows the local production of cheap, generic versions of the drug on payment of a royalty to the patent holder.

The U.S. delegation in Quito is also seeking to extend patent terms on drugs beyond the 20-year minimum required in the WTO agreement, which is known as TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights).

It is also pressing for policies to grant exclusive rights over pharmaceutical test data, and seeking other measures that limit or delay generic competition, says MSF.

The group said in a statement that those tactics are tantamount to flaunting the WTO Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, which firmly placed health needs above commercial interests in trade treaties.

It called on the United States to abandon these "TRIPS-plus" negotiating objectives in the interest of public health in the region, saying that FTAA negotiators must not renege on the agreement reached in Doha.

Cohen said that if FTAA had been in place six years ago, the Brazilian AIDS programme would have never been able to achieve the success it has in saving and improving lives by using local generic production and competition to supply low-priced quality drugs to treat the largest number of people.

Brazil has the highest number of people living with AIDS in Latin America.

"If the U.S. gets what it wants in Quito, countries in Latin America and the Caribbean will lose the most important mechanism they have to access affordable medicines generic competition," said Cohen.

WHO estimates that 1.8 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean are living with HIV/AIDS, and that 110,000 AIDS deaths were recorded in the region in 2001.

The Caribbean is the second-most HIV/AIDS affected area in the world, after sub-Saharan Africa.

"In Honduras, the price of certain brand name AIDS drugs are on average four times the price of WHO-approved generic forms of the same drugs, which means that we can treat four times as many patients with generics on the same budget," said Nick Silberstein, a medical coordinator for MSF in Honduras, in a statement.

"If the FTAA creates a system that blocks use of equivalent but cheaper drugs, it will be a catastrophe for our patients and for all people with HIV in the region. The difference in price can be the difference between life and death for patients in Latin America and the Caribbean."

If approved, the U.S. trade position could by far offset gains reached last week, when U.S. President George W. Bush announced new rules to allow generic drugs to reach U.S. market faster than before. Some civil society groups hailed the move as a small win for generic drug companies and for healthcare.

But if the FTAA includes the policies that U.S. negotiators are now suggesting, government labs in developing countries and domestic copiers of essential medicines would be unable to develop large enough market positions to make it affordable to produce the cheaper drugs.

Health issues are among the reasons why the FTAA has drawn fire from civil society groups, some economists and even government leaders in Latin America, who complain that the United States is preaching what it does not practise at home.

They also contend that the FTAA is an expansion of the North American Free trade Agreement (NAFTA, including Mexico, Canada and the United States), which they say has benefited "unaccountable transnational corporations" at the expense of the poor, workers and the environment.

For the right-leaning Bush administration, reducing and then eliminating hemispheric trade barriers with the FTAA could provide substantial and growing foreign markets for U.S. goods and services.

With more than 800 million people living in the western hemisphere, the FTAA will be the largest free-trade area in the world, a mouth-watering potential goldmine for major U.S. corporations.

In the 1990s, U.S. exports to Latin America grew faster than exports to any other region, according to the office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).

Earlier this week, USTR Robert Zoellick said that the United States will try during current discussions to move the talks into the crucial phase of "specific, concrete bargaining".

The FTAA has become a U.S. priority, characterised by trade officials as a keystone of the U.S. strategy of pursuing trade liberalisation globally, regionally and bilaterally.

The deal, first envisioned by former Republican president Ronald Reagan to open the Americas for U.S. corporations, is scheduled to be completed by January 2005. (END/IPS/NA/IF/HE/EM/ML/02) .

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