terça-feira, agosto 29, 2006
Petição sobre Acordos Bilaterais
O GAT colaborou na elaboração desta petição.
Agência Aids 17.08.06
Uma petição contra os acordos bilaterais na comercialização de medicamentos anti-retrovirais, elaborada por mais de 45 organizações, foi apresentada nesta quinta-feira, 17, na XVI Conferência Internacional de Aids, em Toronto, Canadá. O documento com o título “O acesso ao tratamento está em risco” será enviado à Organização Mundial do Comércio (OMC).
O Ministério da Saúde brasileiro está apoiando esta iniciativa. Em sessão especial para a imprensa, organizada pelo grupo Médicos Sem Fronteiras, a diretora do Programa Nacional de DST/AIDS, Mariângela Simão, falou sobre a experiência do Brasil em produção nacional de anti-retroviras e das negociações com fabricantes estrangeiros. “A expectativa é que esta petição reduza os preços das combinações que compõem os anti-retrovirais”, afirmou. “Existem países que pagam de 10 a 15 vezes mais por matérias primas, em comparação com o Brasil, por terem firmado acordos comerciais com rigorosas cláusulas de direito intelectual”, explicou.
O diretor adjunto do Programa Nacional de DST/AIDS, Carlos Passarelli, citou que os Estados Unidos são exemplo de país que utiliza-se da prática comercial para cobrar ainda mais por diretos intelectuais. “Para entrar no mercado promissor dos EUA, os países acabam cedendo às regras norte-americanas”, acrescentou. Segundo Passarelli, com este cenário regras mais rígidas de propriedade intelectual limitam o acesso ao tratamento da Aids. “Na realidade os interesses econômicos acabam criando vínculos com questões sociais e de saúde pública.”
A petição:
Free Trade Agreements, Intellectual Property, and Access to Medicines
Health GAP, Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam, Third World Network, TNP+, EATG, GAT, SGAC, Solidarite Sida, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network
13 August 2006
Patent and data protection rules in free trade agreements have a profound impact on the ability of developing countries to access life saving medicines of assured quality. When drug sales were tightly controlled by large pharmaceutical companies, patented, highly active antiretroviral therapy cost $10,000 a year. Bypassing and annulling patent rules allowed generic producers to manufacture and sell the same medicines in preferred fixed-dose combinations for as little as $140 year.
Wealthy countries imposed a global baseline of intellectual property protections with the 1994 WTO TRIPS Agreement. Developing countries fought back against patent hegemony and in 2001 won the historical Doha Declarationon the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, which reaffirmed that TRIPS supports governments' right to protect public health and promote access to medicines to all. It took two years (until August 30, 2003) for the WTO to adopt a flawed Decision that partially addresses the problem of permitting export of low-cost generics to developing countries that do not have the capacity to produce these medicines domestically.
However, the U.S. government continues to pursue ever-higher intellectual property protections in regional and bilateral free trade agreements, thereby restricting developing countries' ability to purchase affordable versions of newer medicines. In the past five years the U.S. has concluded negotiations with Australia, Bahrain, Chile, Central American countries and the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Peru, Jordan, Morocco, Oman and Singapore. It is currently negotiating bilateral free trade agreements with Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Ecuador and Panama, and attempted to pursue regional negotiations in Southern Africa and the entire Western Hemisphere (the FTAA). In each negotiation, the U.S. tries to impose U.S.-style intellectual property protections on other nations, which exceed TRIPS standards, and in some instances even exceed U.S. law. These TRIPS-plus intellectual property protections dramatically undermine flexibilities guaranteed in the Doha Declaration and the August 30th Decision.
They include provisions to:
- expand the scope of pharmaceutical patents to include new indications, new formulations, and other minor changes;
- limit grounds for issuing compulsory licenses to emergencies, government non-commercial use, and competition cases only;
- bar parallel trade of on-patent drugs sold more cheaply elsewhere where prohibited by contract;
- extend patent monopolies for administrative delays by patent offices and drug regulatory authorities;
- enhance protections for clinical trial data by providing at least five years of data exclusivity and by linking drug registration rights to patent status, thereby preventing registration and sale of generics;
- enforce patent violations and grant drug companies investor-based rights to sue, including for improvidently granted compulsory licenses.
In sum, the U.S.'s negotiation objectives completely eviscerate the Doha flexibilities, dramatically increase IP protection, and threaten to reduce trade in affordable generic medicines.
KEY RECOMMENDATIONS:.
- A moratorium on intellectual property/patent/data protections in bilateral and regional trade agreements;
- Adoption of a more streamlined procedure for producing generic medicines-for-export;
- Drug companies waive their patent rights on HIV and AIDS medicines in highly affected regions and permit access to their registration data so that inexpensive generic drugs of assured quality can be quickly approved forsale.
- Enjoin drug companies to adopt systematic tiered pricing that enable slow-priced drugs in middle income countries.
Agência Aids 17.08.06
Uma petição contra os acordos bilaterais na comercialização de medicamentos anti-retrovirais, elaborada por mais de 45 organizações, foi apresentada nesta quinta-feira, 17, na XVI Conferência Internacional de Aids, em Toronto, Canadá. O documento com o título “O acesso ao tratamento está em risco” será enviado à Organização Mundial do Comércio (OMC).
O Ministério da Saúde brasileiro está apoiando esta iniciativa. Em sessão especial para a imprensa, organizada pelo grupo Médicos Sem Fronteiras, a diretora do Programa Nacional de DST/AIDS, Mariângela Simão, falou sobre a experiência do Brasil em produção nacional de anti-retroviras e das negociações com fabricantes estrangeiros. “A expectativa é que esta petição reduza os preços das combinações que compõem os anti-retrovirais”, afirmou. “Existem países que pagam de 10 a 15 vezes mais por matérias primas, em comparação com o Brasil, por terem firmado acordos comerciais com rigorosas cláusulas de direito intelectual”, explicou.
O diretor adjunto do Programa Nacional de DST/AIDS, Carlos Passarelli, citou que os Estados Unidos são exemplo de país que utiliza-se da prática comercial para cobrar ainda mais por diretos intelectuais. “Para entrar no mercado promissor dos EUA, os países acabam cedendo às regras norte-americanas”, acrescentou. Segundo Passarelli, com este cenário regras mais rígidas de propriedade intelectual limitam o acesso ao tratamento da Aids. “Na realidade os interesses econômicos acabam criando vínculos com questões sociais e de saúde pública.”
A petição:
Free Trade Agreements, Intellectual Property, and Access to Medicines
Health GAP, Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam, Third World Network, TNP+, EATG, GAT, SGAC, Solidarite Sida, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network
13 August 2006
Patent and data protection rules in free trade agreements have a profound impact on the ability of developing countries to access life saving medicines of assured quality. When drug sales were tightly controlled by large pharmaceutical companies, patented, highly active antiretroviral therapy cost $10,000 a year. Bypassing and annulling patent rules allowed generic producers to manufacture and sell the same medicines in preferred fixed-dose combinations for as little as $140 year.
Wealthy countries imposed a global baseline of intellectual property protections with the 1994 WTO TRIPS Agreement. Developing countries fought back against patent hegemony and in 2001 won the historical Doha Declarationon the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, which reaffirmed that TRIPS supports governments' right to protect public health and promote access to medicines to all. It took two years (until August 30, 2003) for the WTO to adopt a flawed Decision that partially addresses the problem of permitting export of low-cost generics to developing countries that do not have the capacity to produce these medicines domestically.
However, the U.S. government continues to pursue ever-higher intellectual property protections in regional and bilateral free trade agreements, thereby restricting developing countries' ability to purchase affordable versions of newer medicines. In the past five years the U.S. has concluded negotiations with Australia, Bahrain, Chile, Central American countries and the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Peru, Jordan, Morocco, Oman and Singapore. It is currently negotiating bilateral free trade agreements with Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Ecuador and Panama, and attempted to pursue regional negotiations in Southern Africa and the entire Western Hemisphere (the FTAA). In each negotiation, the U.S. tries to impose U.S.-style intellectual property protections on other nations, which exceed TRIPS standards, and in some instances even exceed U.S. law. These TRIPS-plus intellectual property protections dramatically undermine flexibilities guaranteed in the Doha Declaration and the August 30th Decision.
They include provisions to:
- expand the scope of pharmaceutical patents to include new indications, new formulations, and other minor changes;
- limit grounds for issuing compulsory licenses to emergencies, government non-commercial use, and competition cases only;
- bar parallel trade of on-patent drugs sold more cheaply elsewhere where prohibited by contract;
- extend patent monopolies for administrative delays by patent offices and drug regulatory authorities;
- enhance protections for clinical trial data by providing at least five years of data exclusivity and by linking drug registration rights to patent status, thereby preventing registration and sale of generics;
- enforce patent violations and grant drug companies investor-based rights to sue, including for improvidently granted compulsory licenses.
In sum, the U.S.'s negotiation objectives completely eviscerate the Doha flexibilities, dramatically increase IP protection, and threaten to reduce trade in affordable generic medicines.
KEY RECOMMENDATIONS:.
- A moratorium on intellectual property/patent/data protections in bilateral and regional trade agreements;
- Adoption of a more streamlined procedure for producing generic medicines-for-export;
- Drug companies waive their patent rights on HIV and AIDS medicines in highly affected regions and permit access to their registration data so that inexpensive generic drugs of assured quality can be quickly approved forsale.
- Enjoin drug companies to adopt systematic tiered pricing that enable slow-priced drugs in middle income countries.
