E-drug: Sign on letter about Doha
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The following is a sign-on letter for doctors that will be
sent to WTO delegates. This concerns a very important
current negotiation concerning public health and patents.
Last year the WTO agreed in a meeting in Doha that countries
should implement the TRIP agreement on intellectual property
"in a manner supportive of WTO members' right to protect
public health and, in particular, to promote access to
medicines for all." However, there was also a requirement
that negotiations take place on technical issues relating to
exports of medicine and compulsory licenses. The United
States and some other are now trying to force countries in
Africa to agree that the 2001 Doha Declaration on TRIPS only
applies to a handful of diseases such as AIDS, malaria and
TB, or other grave infectious epidemics. The position of
the developing countries is that the 2001 declaration
language was quite clear that every country could decide for
itself what constitutes a public health problem, and there
was certainly no agreement that only infectious diseases
would be covered. A web page with background information is
here: http://www.cptech.org/ip/wto/p6
If you are a doctor and agree with this letter, please your
name and title/affiliation to joel.lexchin@utoronto.ca.
Joel Lexchin, MD
Department of Family and Community Medicine
University of Toronto
Open Letter to WTO members:
We as doctors strongly object to efforts by the United
States and other countries to limit the scope of diseases
covered under the Doha Declaration. The Ministerial
agreement that came out of Doha was meant to ensure that
countries could access medicines necessary to protect the
public health in their jurisdictions. Now a group of
developed countries is trying to reinterpret Doha to mean
that only drugs necessary to treat a limited number of
infectious diseases are covered. This reinterpretation means
that developing countries may not be able to access drugs
that treat important causes of diseases. According to an
article in the November 2, 2002 edition of The Lancet, the
leading causes of disease in high-mortality developing
regions include high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
The World Health Organization estimates that 10 million
people get cancer each year, (half of which live in
developing countries). WHO also estimates that 150 million
people in the world have asthma, and that this number could
grow to 300 million by the year 2025. The International
Diabetes Foundation estimates the number of diabetics in the
world to be 177 million. There are millions of other people
with serious diseases who lack access to a wide variety of
treatments. These problems would not be covered under the
proposed agreement that is now circulating. As health
professionals we believe that it is unacceptable to leave
major causes of disease untreated.
Sincerely
Name
Title/employer (for purposes of identification only)
Send details to
Joel Lexchin <joel.lexchin@utoronto.ca>
Joel Lexchin MD
121 Walmer Rd.
Toronto Ontario
Canada M5R2 2X8
Tel: 416-964-7186
Fax: 416-923-9515
e mail: joel.lexchin@utoronto.ca
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