Kingsley Kaswende
18 December 2005
Hong Kong — International AIDS organisations have criticised the amendments to the Trade Related and Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement saying it will fail to ensure affordable access to medicines.
The organisations, Act Up Paris, European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG) and the Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (GNP+) say by making permanent the waiver adopted on August 30, 2003, WTO is blocking access to affordable medicines for countries with little or no production capacity.
They said the poor countries will be denied the possibility of importing generic medications from countries with production capacity.
"How can a system that requires order-by-order, drug-by-drug, country-by-country procedures be seen as an improvement?" questioned Mauro Guarinieri, chair of GNP+.
WTO director general Pascal Lamy, EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, US trade representative Rob Portman and director of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Harvey Bale all heralded the TRIPs amendments as a great success and that it was proof of the WTO taking into account the needs of developing countries.
"In reality, the WTO's decision introduces in the agreement a cumbersome and more restrictive mechanism than the already existing ones. The amendment goes against the primacy of health over trade, a principle that was unanimously approved in Doha by the same WTO," the organisations stated.
WTO members have up to December 1, 2007 to ratify the amendment by two thirds of its 149 members.
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