200607globalnews1

Global: Access to affordable medicines

G8 declaration criticised by leading medical aid agency

Medecins Sans Frontieres, [MSF] the international medical aid organisation, has responded to the G8 leader’s declaration on innovation and intellectual property with a statement that it will directly harm access to medicines across the developing world.

The G8 is made up of the world’s wealthiest nations and their agreement to demand higher levels of intellectual property protection in emerging economies is set to have a major, negative impact on access to affordable medicines in all developing countries and fails to promote health innovation where it is most needed, MSF said.

Although the World Health Organization [WHO] has set–up an inter–governmental working group to address the problem of innovation and access for countries in the developing world, the G8 flatly ignores this process, according to MSF. It follows a report from the WHO in 2006 which found that intellectual property protection does not stimulate development of medicines to treat diseases that primarily affect people in developing countries.

Non–branded, generic medicines are widely–used in many of the world’s poorest countries because of they are cheap and easy–to–use. More than 80 per cent of antiretroviral drugs used by MSF to treat over 80,000 patients in its AIDS projects in over 30 countries are generics and MSF fears that the G8 agreement will put such work at risk, because further patenting will make more drugs unaffordable.

To address high drug prices countries like Brazil and Thailand have overcome patent barriers by the issue of compulsory licenses on several drugs. Although these measures are fully compliant with the TRIPS agreement of the World Trade Organization, these countries face unacceptable pressure and retaliation from some governments and pharmaceutical companies, reports MSF.

MSF concludes that by only inviting five emerging economies to talks, the G8 ignores the critical input of other developing countries, whose own ability to obtain affordable and appropriate medicines is affected by such discussions.

For more details visit Medecins Sans Frontieres website at: www.msf.org.

Infolink: See Medecins Sans Frontieres feature.

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