LONDON, 31 August 2003 — A global trade deal cutting the price of vital medicines for poor countries has been welcomed by the world’s big drug-makers for the patent safeguards it offers.
For the $400 billion-a-year pharmaceutical industry, these checks should stop copycat drugs made in the Third World flooding premium Western markets.
But health activists said the safeguards in yesterday’s World Trade Organization deal added such a mound of red tape and conditions that drug prices would not sink as low as they should in countries where AIDS and malaria ravage the population.
Companies that invent such drugs argue that without a patent, or 20-year monopoly, to protect profits, no one would invest to research such medicines in the first place. Harvey Bale, director general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations, welcomed the deal — sealed yesterday two days after negotiators reached it — in a Reuters interview this week.
“We see this as a fairly balanced text which does provide flexibility to developing countries — even flexibility to countries that aren’t necessarily the poorest — to address serious public health problems,” Bale said. “It’s not perfect,” he said, expressing fears that some not so poor countries might say they were special cases too.
Under the WTO pact, poor states with no drugs industry will be able to buy cheap generic, or copycat, drugs from countries such as India or Brazil to combat health crises. They must, however, ensure none of these products end up on Western markets where patents are strictly enforced, and only buy drugs that save lives — not “lifestyle” drugs such as the anti-impotence Viagra. The drugs must also not be used for commercial gain.
Under current trade rule exemptions, poor countries can make vital cheap generic drugs for domestic use, but not import them. The United States, home to many major pharmaceutical firms, had resisted an earlier draft accord and insisted on tighter conditions to protect the patent owners.
Analysts said the final agreement was good for big research-based firms in several ways. It should improve their public image after damaging rows, including a legal battle with South Africa, which has the world’s biggest AIDS crisis, over intellectual property.
They have already taken steps to ward off accusations they put patents before patients by keeping antiretroviral medicines that can stop AIDS killing out of reach of the poor. In Africa, way less than one person in 100 can afford modern drugs.
For example, GlaxoSmithKline Plc, the world’s largest maker of HIV/AIDS drugs, has cut the price of its leading Combivir treatment in poor countries by more than 90 percent over the last couple of years.
Also in the firms’ favor, the markets involved are insignificant to them and the deal will have minimal financial impact. Many poor countries have scant patent laws, although most are due to sign up to regulation by 2016 at the latest.
