Countries must fix critical access to medicines flaws in Trans-Pacific Trade Pact: MSF
As negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) restart in Lima, Peru, countries must prioritise fixing critical flaws in the agreement that could leave millions of people in developing countries with limited access to affordable generic medicines, international medical humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said.
“Substantive discussions on access to medicines have languished for more than a year, with negotiating countries and many other groups, including MSF, voicing concerns about the damaging impacts of the proposed rules. The Lima round offers a key opportunity for TPP negotiators to remove harmful provisions from this trade agreement before it’s too late,” said Judit Rius Sanjuan, US Manager, MSF Access Campaign.
Negotiations on the TPP — a far-reaching trade agreement between 11 Pacific Rim countries — continue to be shrouded in secrecy, but leaked copies of the agreement reveal that the US is demanding the most harmful package of intellectual property protections ever proposed for a trade agreement with developing countries.
These rules would make it extremely difficult for generic competitors to enter the market, keeping prices unaffordably high, with devastating public health consequences.
The proposed provisions would, for example, lower patentability standards, making it much easier for pharma companies to obtain secondary patents and extend product monopolies for existing drugs; prohibit challenges to weak or invalid patents until after they have been granted; and grant back door monopolies by locking up clinical data needed to approve generic drugs.
“The TPP threatens to constrain countries’ ability to limit abusive patenting and to ensure timely access to the affordable generic medicines that are so critically important to treatment providers like MSF. Alarmingly, the TPP is slated to become the ‘gold standard’ for future trade agreements across the globe, which means that unless these provisions are rejected now, they will be replicated and imposed on many more developing countries in the coming years,” said Dr Jonathan Novoa Cain, President, MSF Latin America.
EP News Bureau – Mumbai
