10 February 2002

Health before wealth call at WTO General Council meeting
The WTO meets in Geneva this week amidst calls for urgent action on the current deadlock over access to life-saving medicines for poor countries.

International development agency ActionAid is calling on rich nations to honour their 2001 promise at the Doha WTO ministerial meeting to agree a solution that allows poor countries to import generic drugs to treat their people.

The Head of ActionAid’s health programmes in Kenya, Dr Chris Ouma says: “Countries across Africa are just beginning to import life-saving generic drugs. In Kenya we see daily the difference they are starting to make for a small number of people.

The challenge we face is to vastly increase the numbers who can access these medicines. But any progress will come to a full stop or even go into reverse when the latest WTO patenting legislation comes into effect in 2005.”

The WTO Ministerial meeting at Doha in November 2001 declared that patent rules should not prevent countries from taking measures to protect public health or promote access to medicines for all.

Ministers also agreed that by the end of December 2002 they would correct the anomaly in WTO patent rules that allows developing countries to import cheaper generic medicines, but restricts producer countries from exporting them. This denies generic industries the export markets they need to produce on an affordable scale. However, negotiations have reached a stalemate.

ActionAid believes that poor countries have the right to access the medical benefits that Western nations take for granted.

ActionAid UK’s HIV/AIDS campaign manager, Simon Wright says: “Poor countries should not have to wait upon the generosity of rich countries and their pharmaceutical industries. There should not be a limit by disease on what constitutes a serious health problem. Neither should any agreement that is eventually reached burden poor countries with additional red tape.”

ActionAid is running an international email campaign to give poor people access to affordable medicines. It is targeting Pascal Lamy, trade commissioner for the European Commission and Robert Zoellick, US trade representative.