Miami Herald - Friday, November 20, 2003
Beatrice E. Garcia And Nancy San Martin, bgarcia@herald.com

That's the slogan printed on buttons and being handed out by healthcare advocates who came to Miami this week, aiming to get their message to the trade ministers at the Free Trade Area of the Americas ministerial.

The consensus among this group is that the regional trade pact being negotiated by 34 nations in the western hemisphere won't improve access to healthcare and medicines in many countries or preserve efforts to keep healthcare in the public sector.

Accusing the United States of using strong-arm tactics on behalf of American pharmaceutical companies, the international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders on Wednesday urged trade ministers to remove intellectual property provisions in the FTAA agreement that would impose stringent patent rules, which would drive up the costs of life-saving medications.

"Access to treatment is a question of life and death," said Dr. Luis Villa, who works out of Guatemala, at the Doctors Without Borders press briefing. "Without generic competition, the prices will continue increasing."

Earlier in the day, 16 healthcare professionals, academics and policy makers held a public hearing at Temple Israel in Miami, about a mile north from the downtown center where the ministers are meeting, to voice their fears about possible FTAA provisions.

They believe expanded trade between the United States and other countries could allow for-profit healthcare companies to lower licensing standards and bring in less qualified personnel to cover staffing shortages here.

"Licensing holds people accountable," said Martha Baker, a registered nurse and president of the Service Employees International Union Local 1991.

Tony Clarke of the Polaris Institute in Canada expressed fear that growing efforts of U.S. for-profit healthcare firms to expand their markets could threaten his country's universal health system.

Both Clarke and Dr. Evelyn Martinez Calderon from the Physicians' Union of El Salvador worry that the FTAA would foster healthcare privatization in both countries.

Doctors Without Borders said patent rules in the draft proposals of the FTAA would place at risk an estimated 200,000 people infected with HIV and AIDS in Latin America and the Caribbean. The organization contends the proposed intellectual property provisions would stamp out generic competition that makes medicines used for antiretroviral treatment less costly.

Costa Rica citizen Guillermo Murillo, who was diagnosed with HIV 12 years ago and began treatment six years ago, said that if the issue is not resolved prior to the January 2005 scheduled implementation of FTAA, half of the patients now in dire need of treatment will be dead.

"Don't think of them as numbers, think of them as people with families," Murillo said.

Many advocates who came to Miami to share alternative points of view with the trades ministers have been upset that they were set up in hotels several blocks away from the location were the ministerial meetings are being held.

The delegates attending the American Trade and Sustainable Development Forums were based at the Clarion and Courtyard Marriott hotels on Southeast Second Avenue, while trade ministers were holding fort at the Hotel Inter-Continental off Biscayne Boulevard.

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