Brussels, 24/01/2005 (Agence Europe) - In Brussels on Tuesday, the European Parliament's International Trade Committee organised a hearing on poor countries' access to medicines in order to discuss three burning issues: application of the TRIPS intellectual property rules to developing countries from 1 January onwards, the expiry in two months time of the deadline for applying the 30 August 2003 decision on compulsory licences and the upcoming examination by the European Parliament of the report by Belgian ALDE MEP Johan Van Hecke's report on the draft regulation to allow the EU to export low cost medicines to the third world and prevent them being re-imported. The hearing turned into yet another fruitless discussion between people defending intellectual property and the market in the name of innovation, competition and commercial law and their opponents fiercely defending human rights and the right to health.
On the basis of the 2 December 2004 resolution in which the European Parliament recommended suspending intellectual property rights until industrialised countries have actually taken the measures required to ensure the application of compulsory licences, Vittorio Emanuele Agnoletto (GUE, Italy) slammed the TRIPS agreement and the WTO and called for a total re-think of the policy on patents. In response, WTO representative Robert Kampf tired to defend the system for providing what he described as the necessary flexibility to allow poor countries to access medicines. Kampf said that since the beginning of 2005, countries like India are now required to protect patents (which it did not do in the past) and require compulsory licences for Indian companies to export generic medicines to poor countries. On the basis of articles 8 and 40 of the agreement, Kampf tried to argue that measures to prevent abuse of intellectual property rights provided countries with ways ensuring access to medicines and that often the threat of using compulsory licences had been enough to make big drugs companies issue voluntary licences or cut the price of their products. Speaking for Medecins sans Frontiere, Ellen t'Hoen replied that the poor country's ability to negotiate with drugs companies depended on the credibility of the threat of manufacturing or importing the drug in question and countries like Brazil might have this ability, but not countries like Malawi or small island states. She said it had to be borne in mind that the cost of research would always be paid by a big market in Europe and/or the United States, not in Africa. Over and above the TRIPS agreement, a R+D system had to be set up taking account of the needs of the Southern Hemisphere. The medicines available do not cover all the needs of poor countries and are not always adapted to poor country diseases, populations and/or distribution methods. T'Hoen said the most important thing was drugs companies' pricing policies, commenting that prices are shooting up for drugs for the second round of treatment.
French Green MEP Alain Lipietz got no clear reply to his question about the share of profits and research costs in the pricing of medicines, but made quite a good summary of the views expressed by a representative of the EFPIA (European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations), saying that 'industry is not social security. Without patents, India has not been able to save its sick people because it didn't have social security. Without patents, there wouldn't be any treatment for AIDS.' Peter Bains of GSK said more than that, adding industry's argument that it is the lack of public health infrastructure in poor countries that was the problem, illustrating at great length industries 'philanthropy'. The EFPIA had chosen a shinning example in GSK since GSK has granted voluntary licences to India and South Africa at a not-for-profit price (still USD 40 a year more than the cheapest generic) for 18 million tablets of its anti-retroviral drug Combivir in the first nine months of 2004, more than in the three previous years combined. Admitting that his company had to make real profits to satisfy share-holders, Baines highlighted GSK's contribution of 6 bn Albendazole tablets over 20 years at a market value of a billion dollars for the WHO programme to stamp out lymphatic filariasis. Not all companies are as active, but GSK has produced a lot of publicity to defend its brand and not be seen as causing problems for developing countries' access to medicines. Other companies, like Sanofi-Aventis are more discreet. It was one of the finalists for the Ethics and Governance prize, pipped to the post by Accor for its environmental management), for an anti-malarial treatment, Lapdap, sold without profit to humanitarian associations and a network of ethical pharmacists who have pledged to sell at low prices.
All this activity by the drugs companies will never convince William Haddad, president of the association of generic manufacturers, who compared the problem of access to medicines to the tsunami in the Indian Ocean. He said Japan and the European Union were hiding behind the United States, while 8000 people die every day because of lack of medicine. For decades, India and China have provided medicines to the third world and now this will have to stop, said Haddad, urging the European Parliament to react to ensure (though he did not use these words) that companies like his own (CIPLA) can continue to copy medicine in India and export it to Sub-Saharan Africa, where 30 million people were going to die. How many would die in India, he asked.
A representative of the European Commission, Patrick Ravillard, first tired to answer Agnoletto's question about suspending the TRIPS agreement, saying this was not the Commission's view, and describing TRIPS as striking a balance between intellectual property and public health. The flexible areas of TRIPS had to be implemented, he said, echoing the arguments of the WTO's representative. He then turned to the draft regulation on compulsory licences, describing it as the concrete realisation of a commitment made by Commissioner Lamy to the European Parliament, which was wholly based on the WTO's August 2003 decision. In response to Maigari Gurama Buba from Nigeria's Bureau at the WTO, who asked for a certificate mechanism for exported medicines to be included the draft regulation because poor countries do not have the resources for checking the quality and safety of medicines, Patrick Ravillard said the draft regulation already foresaw scientific advice from the European Medicines Agency. On Haddad's 'apocalyptic description', the Commission representative stressed it was still possible to export low cost medicines to Africa and couldn't see why Indian generic manufacturers would abandon markets that have been their livelihood for decades.