E-drug: Re: World Health Assembly
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Today there is a new version of the HIV/AIDS resolution that is much
different from the one yesterday. It contains many new requests that
WHO deal with pricing, trade and IPR issues, in terms of access to
medicines. The changes came in requests from many developing countries.
For example, Zimbabwe's amendment is now paragraph 25, and reads:
[the WHO shall] determine the best price that could be obtained for a
treatment regime for HIV/AIDS of acceptable quality, and advise on the
management, legal and regulatory issues that need to be addressed to
obtain medicines at this price;
There are also lots of other new sections, the most widely reported is
the sections added by Brazil, but there are a number of new sections
added at the request of other developing countries too.
Dr. Tom Novotny and the rest of the US delegation is in overdrive,
working closely with the IFPMA, to kill the changes in the resolution
opposed by big pharma interests. Among other things told to delegates
today was that compulsory licesning is illegal in the USA (the US issued
7 compulsory license to transportation patents in February, and has
issued hundreds more in recent years. See
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f4100/4187.htm and
http://www.cptech.org.org/ip/health/cl). Also, the US delegation is
saying that parallel imports are illegal in the US, which is true under
FDA regulations, not not true in general under US patent law. (Also,
not only are there many bills in US congress to permit parallel imports
of medicines, by Hillary Clinton supports this legislation in her Senate
bid in NY.)
In any event, the US delgation was stung by today's NY Times story on
the WHA meetings, and is lashing out at Act UP and other NGOs who have
been monitoring the US lobbying efforts. HAI, Act Up, MSF and CPT are
all on the ground in Geneva. MSF had a very good briefing yesterday on
the West Africa Bangui patent agreement, and today HAI, MSF and CPT have
a briefing on access to medicines. Today will also be an interesting
day for the AIDS resolution. The US tried to create its own informal
drafting group, but now it is out in the open, there is supposed to be a
formal meeting on the AIDS resolution at 1 pm today. The US delegation
continues to try to lobby on behalf of big pharma here, but is now
finding it hard to explain this to the US press. Many say that the US
will block the AIDs resolution unless it takes out the references to
prices, parallel importing and intellectual property rights, possibly
pushing the resolution back to the WHA executive board sometime in early
2001.
One interesting note is that the US is particularly opposed to having
the WHO issue reports, like it did last week (with MSF and UNAIDS) on
the West Africa Bangui agreement, that provide pointed advice on how to
make patent laws better from a point of view of access to medicines.
The US, and the EU, are pushing to prevent the WHO for doing this,
leaving technical assistance on patents issue to WIPO, an organization
generally considered a good friend to the pharmaceutical industry.
Jamie