E-drug: ACT UP Demands Essential Medicines for All (cont'd)
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I agree with Ellen, James, Mark and Kirsten...
When I qualified WHO of being uncomfortable, it was only a
"diplomatic" way of saying that we cannot expect to much from WHO
in this field, unfortunately. But clearly we also have to help WHO to
be more ambitious. The end point criteria is improving access to
essential and affordable drugs for the most in danger; TRIPS is only
part of the whole picture. I would suggest the following strategy as
far as TRIPS is concerned:
1 - asking for no TRIPS +;
2 - advocacy for large use of compulsory license and parallel importing
for essential drugs;
3 - advocacy for using the exception criteria to allow exportation of
essential drugs produced under compulsory license to a third country.
Most of this is already possible under TRIPS, the drugs being essential
or not. We also need to convince WTO that essential drugs deserve a
special treatment: getting from the WTO a Working Group on Access
to Medicines would be a good objective.
What is most important in the proposal of Venezuela is the
under-statement: essential drugs need special consideration. But not
necessarily only essential drugs from the WHO list.
Pierre Chirac
MSF, France
e-mail: pierchir@club-internet.fr
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