PHA-Exchange> Public health vs commercial interests

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CHRISTMAS AT WTO: 15 MILLION PEOPLE DIED IN 2002

The dramatic collapse of the WTO negotiations on the export of generics can
easily be explained. For a whole year a number of rich countries had only
one objective : to renege on the Doha principle that public health has
precedence over commercial interests.

The United States taking the position of the International Federation of the
Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association, did its utmost to restrict the
scope of the debate to a few diseases. Such a position is contrary to the
Doha declaration and totally unjustifiable from a public health point of
view. The European Union tried to impose a complex and burdensome system
which would have been totally unworkable and thus would have limited the
flow of generics.

Never did these countries respect the mandate that they had assigned to
themselves : to ensure access as quickly as possible to generic copies of
medicines in all the countries where the strict enforcement of intellectual
property constitutes a major barrier to access to health care and
treatments.

In the last few weeks, flouting the very first principle of negotiations,
these countries resorted to all kinds of pressures and forms of intimidation
possible to force developing countries to accept an agreement. The draft
accord was totally inadequate to address the public health needs of
developing countries, but would have made it possible for rich countries to
forget this question for ever, and increased the power of pharmaceutical
companies. The draft accord totally limited the scope of the Doha
declaration and required a hegemonic respect of intellectual property rules
everywhere in the world.

After endless meetings, as it was not possible for developing countries to
accept an accord on drugs covering only three diseases, the United States
remained intransigent and chose to block the text.

What is the end result of it all? In one year 15 million people have died of
infectious diseases. It has been shown that the indiscriminate
implementation of intellectual property rules prevalent in developed
countries is inappropriate for these developing countries. Concerning
healthcare, multinational corporations do not need the markets of these
countries to recoup their research and development costs and make huge
profits. Nevertheless, their monopoly profits continue to kill people.

The WTO negotiations were supposed to adapt the framework of international
agreements to the real needs of the people living in developing countries
concerning a fundamental sector : public health. They failed to do so.

The WTO has proved unable to guarantee fair negotiations which serve not
only the interests of private companies, but also those of the member states
of the organization. The TRIPS agreement has turned out to be unable to take
any interests except commercial interests into account.

As rich countries have refused to think seriously about the public health
issue and to get seriously involved in negotiations, they have shown that
the system they have chosen to impose on the rest of the world is
ineffective and dangerous.
Contact:  Email: galk at noos.fr