The WTO Council for intellectual property is set to meet, tomorrow November
29, for the last time before the WTO Ministerial meeting in Hong Kong. The
TRIPS Council will be considering proposals to amend the 1995 TRIPS
Agreement in order to permit the exportation of generic medicines produced
under compulsory license.

According to AIDS activists, the proposals are flawed, and poor countries
should not accept a permanent amendment that has not already been shown to
work in practice.

In 2001, the WTO signed the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health (the
Doha Declaration), which affirms the right of countries to prioritize access
to medicines and public health over intellectual property rights. However,
the Doha Declaration left unfinished the issue of how countries with
insufficient or no manufacturing capacity can make use of these rights.
Indeed, most poor countries are not adequately equipped to do efficient
domestic production of medicines, while those few who are require the
economies of scale of a large, global market in order to reach prices that
the poor can afford. However, under the 1995 TRIPS Agreement, trade in
generic medicines made under compulsory license is forbidden.

On August 30 2003, the Members of the WTO finally agreed on a temporary
procedure for allowing trade in compulsory-licensed medicines. The procedure
has been criticized by industry experts (1) and activists alike for being
too burdensome and unworkable in practice. However, the EU is pressuring
developing countries to accept that the flawed August 30 agreement be locked
in as a permanent amendment to the TRIPS Agreement - despite the fact that
the procedure has not been used since its introduction more than 2 years
ago.

"Developing countries should not be pressured to agree quickly to an
amendment, just so that WTO members have something to harvest at Hong Kong
after four years of negotiations. Rich countries are desperate to deflect
attention from their lack of movement in agriculture and their
anti-development proposals in NAMA and services. For this reason, they are
resurrecting TRIPS and other issues for quick action by Hong Kong. The EU
has been circulating a proposal for an amendment to lock in an unworkable
system - this proposal must be rejected," said Mauro Guarinieri of the
Global Network of People living with HIV.

"Millions of people with HIV are depending on a genuinely successful
resolution of WTO barriers to access to medicines. This issue is too
important for countries to quickly agree something during the next two
weeks, just to be able to claim that the WTO system still works and can
deliver for development. If the price of making that claim is the lives
people living with treatable but deadly diseases, then developing countries
should not pay it."

Contact :

Asia Russel / Health GAP / +1 267 475 2645

Khalil Elouardighi / Act Up-Paris / +33 6 6315 3882

Mauro Guarinieri / GNP+ / +39 347 963 1837

Wim Vandevelde / EATG / + 351 91 7275243

Notes :

(1) www.egagenerics.com/doc/ ega_compulsory-licensing_2005-03.pdf