E-DRUG: MSF:Amendment to TRIPS Agreement: Access more bleak
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For Immediate Release
Amendment to WTO TRIPS Agreement
Makes Access to Affordable Medicines Even More Bleak:
MSF Expresses Concern that Patients the World-over Will Have to Pay the
Price
Geneva, Tuesday December 6, 2005
Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) today expressed alarm at the decision of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to amend the TRIPS Agreement based on a mechanism that has failed to prove it can increase access to medicines. The so-called
'August 30th decision' which was designed in 2003 to allow production and
export of generic medicines, has long been viewed by MSF and public health
groups as overly cumbersome and inefficient. Yet to date there is no
experience using the mechanism - not one patient has benefited from its use
- despite the fact that newer medicines, such as second-line AIDS drugs,
are priced out of reach of poor patients. MSF is already being confronted
with steep price increases in our projects today - we pay five to 30 times
more for second-line AIDS medicines to treat patients that need newer
drugs. Delaying the amendment would have been a far better option, as it
would have ensured the possibility of testing and improving the mechanism
in practice.
This decision shows that the WTO is ignoring the day-to-day reality of drug
production and procurement. The amendment has made permanent a burdensome
drug-by-drug, country-by-country decision-making process, which does not
take into account the fact that economies of scale are needed to attract
interest from manufacturers of medicines. Without the pull of a viable
market for generic pharmaceutical products, manufacturers are not likely to
want to take part in the production-for-export system on a large scale. And
without competition among several manufacturers, MSF fears it will be
extremely difficult to ensure that prices of newer medicines will fall the
way first-generation AIDS medicines did.
To illustrate the hurdles the newly amended system creates, a country
wishing to import a generic version of a patented medicine would first have
to notify the WTO of its exact needs regarding the patented medicine, and
of its intent to issue a compulsory license in order to import it. Only
after that could another country also issue a compulsory license to
authorize the generic manufacture of the medicine for export. But the
compulsory license issued by the first country would only be for the
declared needs of one other country. The amendment does not allow for the
procurement of medicines through international tendering, which is the most
common and efficient way of purchasing drugs.
MSF therefore calls on the WTO to provide evidence by the end of next year
demonstrating that the mechanism it is putting in place can bring an end to
the negative effects that full TRIPS implementation has on access to
medicines.
Contact:
Ellen 't Hoen +33.6.223.758.71
Sheila Shettle +41.22.849.8403
+41.79.293.0270
Kevin Phelan +1.212.655.3763
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Rachel M. Cohen
U.S. Director, Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)
333 Seventh Avenue, 2nd Floor * New York, NY * 10001-5004 * USA
Tel: +1-212-655-3762
Mobile: +1-917-331-9077
Fax: +1-212-679-7016
E-mail: rachel.cohen@newyork.msf.org
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
http://www.accessmed-msf.org/