Patents not the
only culprit preventing access to vital drugs
 |
| Cross-border compulsory
licensing - threatening innovative R&D |
Paris, 10
November 2002 - As
WTO officials meet in Geneva this week to discuss intellectual property and
drug patents, ICC member companies have issued a statement saying inadequate
financing and poor infrastructure, not the patent system, are the main reasons
for the poor availability of Aids, tuberculosis and anti-malarial drugs in the
developing world.
Citing as evidence World
Health Organization (WHO) figures which show that 95% of the WHO Essential Drugs
List are off-patent, the ICC statement says intellectual property has been miscast
as the culprit in the debate over developing country access to essential drugs.
The statement, from ICC's Commission on Intellectual Property, lists 12 anti-retrovirals,
nine anti-TB drugs and eight anti-malarials among those which are currently
off-patent.
The ICC commission includes
IP experts from such companies as Nokia, British American Tobacco, General Electric,
Pfizer Inc. and Baxter Healthcare Corporation.
"The issue of access
to medicine calls for measures and policies that are entirely unrelated to intellectual
property, and which will not be resolved by eroding the strength of intellectual
property rights", said Daphne Yong-d'Herve, Senior Policy manager of the
ICC Commission.
She urged governments to
give priority to partnerships with the private sector, rather than resorting
to a system of unrestrained cross-border compulsory licensing which would impose
the burden of financing drug provision primarily on innovative companies.
The ICC paper has been written
to help break the current deadlock in the WTO on cross-border compulsory licensing.
Such licensing would allow countries which lack the capacity to manufacture
pharmaceuticals to import drugs produced in other countries without the authorisation
of the patent holder.
The ICC statement warns
that products manufactured and distributed under cross-border compulsory licensing
risk being of substandard quality, often leading to dangerous and even lethal
consequences.
The statement cites WHO
research which found that less than one in three developing countries have fully
functioning drug regulatory authorities and that in many of these places 10-20%
of sampled drugs fail quality control tests.
The Dutch government's recent
recalling of a large batch of Aids drugs which were sold at cut-price rates
in Africa and illegally re-exported to the lucrative European market has confirmed
fears that cross-border compulsory licensing allows drugs not subject to the
quality control standards of the patent holder onto other markets and can deprive
intended recipients of essential treatment.
The WTO General Council
is meeting this week to resolve several trade issues before the Doha Declaration
deadline of 31 December 2002, including the issue of compulsory cross-border
licencing.
For further information please
contact Click here to send a mail, Senior
Policy Manager, tel (in Paris) +33 1 49 53 28 24
ICC Statement: Further
views on cross border compulsory licensing