March 5, 2002

At the time of the Doha declaration on intellectual property and public health, WTO member countries mandated that the TRIPS Council in Geneva would clarify the possibilities of giving access to generic medicines to countries that do not produce them.

While the right to use compulsory licenses to produce or import medications was established at Doha, what was not dealt with was the right for countries boasting drug-making capacity to supply countries lacking such capacity with affordable, generic versions of patented products.

Thus, many impoverished countries without drug-manufacturing capacity still have no access to low-cost generic medicines and remain chained to the monopoly prices of pharmaceutical corporations.

It is now up to the WTO¹s Council of TRIPS, holding March 5 through 7, to remove this obstacle as an emergency measure. Yet the developed countries are trying to go back on the promises they made last November and whittle away the rights of the sick who live in impoverished countries.

Article 30 of the TRIPS agreement allows, among other things, countries to export medicines and other products in order to respond to public health needs. However, the European Commission is trying to impose a restrictive interpretation of the agreement on intellectual property, setting drastic constraints that are inapplicable . in practice. By thus exposing developing Members to WTO litigation, they would plunge us back into the climate of blackmail and menace that Doha was supposed to have ended.

Furthermore, the European Commission is trying to limit the advances made at Doha to situations of national health crises, even though it was clearly established at the WTO conference that compulsory licensing should be used before crisis happen, and, specifically, in order to avoid them.

Health care and access to medication are fundamental rights, that neither industry nor the European Commission should be allowed to oppose.

Act-Up Paris demands that European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy:

• reaffirm the right of each nation to define for itself the conditions in which public interests are more important than patent rights;
• reaffirm that developing countries have no obligations vis a vis the TRIPS Agreement and health products before 2016, including no obligation to grant patents on health products;
• affirm the right of ant country to supply, without restriction, copies of patented products to any country where this product is either in the public domain or under compulsory license.

Gaëlle Krikorian
North/South Commission
Act Up-Paris

BP 287 - 75525 Paris cedex 11

Tel: 33 1 49 29 44 75
Port: 33 6 09 17 70 55
Fax: 33 1 48 06 16 74
E.mail: galk@noos.fr