WTO Drugs deal 'Not Viable' by Nick Mathiason The Observer / UK 10:44am 2nd Sep, 2003   August 31, 2003    Recriminations erupted last night over an international trade agreement to provide cut-price copies of life-saving drugs for the world's poorest countries    Amid jubilation in Geneva, where yesterday trade negotiators thrashed out a compromise they hope will avert a series of health catastrophes afflicting huge parts of Africa and Asia, fears are growing that the agreement will be unworkable.    Under the intellectual property deal, poor countries, can now issue a compulsory licence to import low-cost copies of expensive branded drugs owned by powerful pharmaceutical firms. But according to trade analysts, the deal will be unable to provide the quantities of drugs needed to combat the world's growing deadly infections.    'The deal was designed to offer comfort to the US and Western pharmaceutical industry,' said Ellen 't Hoen of Médecins Sans Frontières. 'Unfortunately, it offers little comfort for poor patients. Global patent rules will continue to drive up the price of medicines.'    The principal concern is that it will be uneconomic for manufacturers of cheap copies of expensive drugs to export them to countries that need it. Pharmaceutical firms, whose collective profits run into tens of billions of pounds, have largely failed to reduce the price of their products, making them unaffordable to developing countries.    A deal has been held up for two years over concerns by pharmaceutical companies, led by American giant Pfizer, that generic drug companies, who copy patented products, will make huge profits from health crises. The major firms also fear medicines meant for the poor will 'leak' into the West. Campaigners dismiss that as exaggeration.    'This is a historic agreement for the World Trade Organization,' said its director general Supachai Panitchpakdi. 'It proves the Organization can handle humanitarian as well as trade concerns.'    There has been immense pressure for poor countries to adopt the deal. Had it collapsed yesterday it would have derailed next week's trade talks in Mexico. The agreement comes as a new study reveals a massive outbreak of hepatitis C in Africa.    Oxfam reveals that 170 million globally are infected, with 150 million of them living in poor countries. The disease is labeled 'Africa's silent killer'. Cases progress slowly resulting in chronic liver diseases, cirrhosis and cancer. But the overwhelming number of sufferers have no access to medicines to combat the disease    Hepatitis C is most prevalent in Egypt where up to a fifth of its 70 million population suffer from it, according to the campaign group.    Two pharmaceutical companies produce drugs to combat the disease - Hoffman-La Roche and Schering-Plough. A Hoffman La Roche spokesman was unaware of any discount schemes by his firm to poor countries.    Mohga Kamal Smith of Oxfam, who wrote the report, said: 'The world is focused on HIV, TB and malaria but hepatitis C affects tens of millions. The medicines are unaffordable. Yesterday's agreement may be seen as a breakthrough, but the reality is the drugs will not be affordable for the millions who need them. The tragedy is this is a missed opportunity.'    © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003    September 5, 2003. 'The WTO Drug Deal- How Hope was Bargained Away' by Carol Goar. Published by the Toronto Star, Canada.    There was a time when health activists thought a global trade deal on affordable medicines would be an achievement worth celebrating.    Now they have one. But they're not celebrating.    Last weekend, members of the World Trade Organization agreed on a plan to offer poor countries improved access to life-saving drugs. The deal, which ended a 21-month test of wills between the United States and the developing world, was hailed as a breakthrough by relieved negotiators.    Canada's trade minister, Pierre Pettigrew, called it proof that the 146-member WTO "can handle trade challenges as well as humanitarian issues."    Richard Elliott, director of policy and research at the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, wishes he could be as ebullient.    He acknowledges that the Aug. 30 decision might do some good at the margins. But it falls so far short of what HIV/AIDS sufferers in Africa and Asia need — and what they were promised — that he cannot cheer.    To understand the sense of letdown that Elliott and other Third World advocates are feeling, it helps to go back to the beginning of this round of trade negotiations. The launch took place in the remote sheikdom of Qatar in November of 2001.    Defying predictions of failure, trade ministers emerged from their six-day meeting with an agreement to forge a new global trade pact by 2005. The linchpin of their accord was a pledge by all members to work out rules permitting poor countries to produce or import cut-rate drugs to fight deadly diseases such as AIDS.    Even skeptics dared to believe that — for once — globalization might produce something positive.    Their hopes soon faded.    The task of converting the ministerial consensus into a legal regime allowing poor countries to override drug patents proved impossible for trade negotiators. They haggled endlessly.    Meanwhile, the political consensus reached in Qatar began to fall apart. The U.S., backed by Japan and the Europe Union, insisted that limits be placed on the number of diseases eligible for cheap medicines. Washington also demanded safeguards to prevent low-cost drugs intended for the Third World from leaking back into Western markets.    Delegates from the developing countries, in turn, accused the U.S. and its allies of taking their marching orders from the powerful pharmaceutical industry.    The longer the talks went on, the testier they became. The WTO's deadline of Dec. 31, 2002, for a drug deal passed without an agreement. Several extensions came and went.    It wasn't until a few weeks ago that negotiators made an all-out effort to break the impasse. This sudden sense of urgency had little to do with the fact that AIDS kills 6,000 people a day in Africa. It was prompted by next week's WTO ministerial conference in Cancun, Mexico.    Member governments, deadlocked on the critical issue of agricultural subsidies, wanted something to show for almost two years' work. A drug deal, they felt, would send trade ministers into their Sept. 10 to 14 meeting with some badly needed momentum.    Elliott is a realist. He knows that political motives always trump humanitarian concerns at the global trade bargaining table. But he cannot live with a compromise so flawed that will leave essential medicines beyond the reach of millions of AIDS sufferers in Africa and Asia.    The deal announced last weekend in Geneva has so many caveats and restrictions that it will take years to get a trickle of discount drugs flowing into developing countries.    First, any nation seeking to import generic (no name) versions of patented pharmaceutical products must convince the WTO that it has a genuine "national health emergency" on its hands and no capacity to produce the drugs it needs. This will require extensive — and expensive — paperwork.    Second, it must take "reasonable measures" to prevent any cut-rate medicine it imports from being sold outside is borders. Most poor countries have neither the means nor the money to fulfil this obligation.    Third, manufacturers of generic drugs will be expected to use special packaging and labeling for products destined for developing countries to minimize the risk that they will be sold in wealthy nations. This will drive up the cost of life-saving drugs.    Taken together, Elliott argues, these conditions will make the system almost unworkable.    He doesn't think it is fair that developing countries have to jump through hoops to save lives. He doesn't think it's right that the WTO has backtracked on its original commitment to make cheap drugs available to the world's most vulnerable people.    In spite of all this, Elliott hopes Canada will be one of the first nations to start supplying generic drugs to AIDS-ravaged countries. That would require changes in the Patent Act. "The least we can do is remove any legal obstacles at our end of things," he says.    Elliott will watch next week's WTO meeting in Cancun with weary detachment.    He has seen how easily a big win can turn into a big disappointment.    Copyright 1996-2003. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited
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