[AP article below]
NAIROBI—Kenyan activists accused the United States on Thursday of bullying poor countries into accepting a trade deal on drugs that favours corporate greed above the lives of millions dying from AIDS and other diseases.
The pact aims to increase poor countries' access to affordable medicines to battle the world's worst killers.
But reservations echoed across the African continent on Thursday, from Zambia where AIDS activists said the drugs would still not be cheap enough for most people, to South Africa where experts criticised the red tape involved in acquiring them.
The deal, expected to be endorsed by the 146-state World Trade Organisation (WTO) later on Thursday, will set aside patents owned by pharmaceutical companies to allow poor countries to buy cheap copies of medicines from countries like India and Brazil.
But critics say Washington has inserted clauses creating new barriers which undermine the patent exemptions.
"America is arm-twisting," said Gitura Mwaura, chair of the Kenya Coalition for Access to Essential Medicines. "It's a triumph for corporate greed," he told Reuters.
"America is not taking into consideration the situation of poor countries like Kenya, what it seems to be doing is putting to the fore the interests of the Big Pharma (drugs companies)," he said.
Kenya, along with South Africa, India and Brazil, reached the agreement with the United States in Geneva on Wednesday, clearing the way for its adoption by the WTO which governs global trade.
The $400-billion a year pharmaceuticals industry dismissed activists' objections, saying the agreement would promote drug access for the neediest while helping to protect the rights of firms which invest in developing new medicines.
A Zambian campaigner welcomed any agreement to lower drug prices, but warned that more funds were needed to buy HIV/AIDS treatments for Africa -- the region hardest hit by the disease.
"The move to allow poor countries to import cheaper generic drugs is a good step but the price will still be prohibitive to the majority of the people suffering from AIDS in Africa," said Listard Banda, director of the Zambia AIDS Network.
In South Africa, experts said the deal was bureaucratic, making it hard for countries with no manufacturing capability of their own to buy foreign-made copies of patented drugs.
"The sense is really that it is way too much red tape, and that it is not a feasible solution to the problem," said Jonathan Berger of the AIDS law project at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand.
"OUTFLANKED"
Kenyan activists said the United States had succeeded in inserting clauses into the deal that effectively erased promises of drug access won two years ago at WTO talks in Doha, Qatar.
"They've just outflanked the developing countries," said Gichinga Ndirangu, trade communication manager at the Heinrich Boll Foundation in Nairobi, a non-governmental organisation.
Activists worry that rules in the deal designed to prevent cheap drugs being diverted from poor countries and sold at knock-down prices in the West will force manufacturers to invest in expensive packaging, pushing up prices.
They are also concerned that the deal will force importing nations to go through an onerous process of proving they cannot manufacture the drugs themselves, creating costly delays.
But there was some sympathy for moves in the deal to stop drugs firms copying pills like the anti-impotence treatment Viagra with an eye on profits rather than saving lives.
"Whatever they say needs to be around essential medicines," said Linda Philip, chief operating officer of South Africa's Aspen Pharmacare (APNJ.J), which began producing Africa's first domestically-manufactured generic AIDS drug this month under license from Bristol-Meyers-Squibb (BMY.N).
Uganda's health ministry, which has won international recognition for its anti-AIDS campaign, said more needed to be done to lower the cost of drugs, regardless of the new deal.
GENEVA -- The most emotionally charged problem in the World Trade Organization appeared near solution after key countries agreed on the wording of a deal that would allow poor nations to seek alternatives to expensive patented drugs for diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria.
Negotiators who have struggled with the issue for almost two years are expected to adopt Thursday an agreement that was drawn up last December but rejected by the United States, plus an accompanying statement designed to calm the fears of the big pharmaceutical companies.
"I hope we will seize the moment," said Canadian WTO Ambassador Sergio Marchi, who last December -- as chairman of the WTO's general council -- reluctantly had to admit temporary defeat faced with unflinching U.S. refusal.
Under WTO rules, countries facing public health crises have the right to override patents on vital drugs and order copies from cheaper, generic suppliers. However, until now they could only order from domestic producers -- useless for the huge majority of developing countries that have no domestic pharmaceutical industry.
U.S. pharmaceutical research companies were concerned that a deal to allow countries to import generic drugs would be abused by generics manufacturers and could also lead to drugs being smuggled back into rich countries.
However, all sides have accepted that the problem has to be settled for humanitarian reasons and because of the damage it has done to the public perception of the WTO -- the 146-nation body that sets rules on international trade.
Failure to reach agreement this week also would throw a huge cloud over a crucial meeting of WTO ministers in Cancun, Mexico, in less than two weeks' time, and would jeopardize the chance agreement there on other issues as part of the current "round" of trade liberalization negotiations.
On Wednesday, a core group of negotiators from the United States, Brazil, India, Kenya and South Africa finally agreed on the wording of the statement.
The document was presented to all members late Wednesday. Officials said there were questions and many diplomats said they needed to speak to their governments, but no country signaled that it opposed the agreement.
They met again briefly Thursday afternoon, and were told some countries still had questions. They broke to discuss those problems among themselves, but were to reconvene before attending a memorial service for slain U.N. Iraq envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.
The proposed statement says that rules allowing countries to override patents "should be used in good faith to protect public health ... not be an instrument to pursue industrial or commercial policy objectives."
It calls for special measures to prevent drugs being smuggled back to rich country markets, including special packaging or different colored tablets.
Developed countries would agree not to make use of the provision.
But the development aid group Oxfam said the deal would be a "disaster."
"This would be a travesty of an agreement that would no doubt be presented as wonderful thing for development," said Oxfam's Head of Advocacy in Geneva, Celine Charveriat. "The text contains so much red tape and so many obstacles that if it were accepted developing countries would still struggle to get access to cheap medicines and thousands of people would continue to die unnecessarily."
|
If
you have come to this page from an outside location click
here to get back to mindfully.org |