By KEVIN SPURGAITIS
At the pinnacle of the AIDS pandemic, Africa faces a widespread health calamity in the absence of high quality anti-AIDS treatments. However, low-cost generic drugs may finally flow into beleaguered African nations.
In September, Canada announced its new initiative on affordable drugs in Africa. Endorsed by prime minister designate Paul Martin, UN bodies, health advocates and AIDS support groups, the plan – if unopposed abroad – will permit the country’s generic drug manufacturers to export cheap clones of anti-retroviral medicines to the developing world. Last month, brand-name pharmaceutical companies conceded to the proposal that could potentially save millions of lives, advocates say.
The move follows the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) adoption of a Declaration on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) Agreement in August. The declaration guaranteed the right of WTO-member governments to ensure greater access to essential medicines, under approved exemptions to TRIPS.
Acknowledging Canada’s recent move, Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, hailed the plan as a “significant development” and “remarkable breakthrough.”
“It looks as though the government of Canada is going to do something that is absolutely unprecedented in the behaviour of the G8 countries. I’m proud of my government of Canada. It is truly an important thing it is doing,” Lewis said in his keynote address, during the Christian Children’s Fund of Canada’s International Conference, held at Toronto’s Ryerson University in October.
In the past, Lewis has repeatedly criticized brand-name manufacturers for resisting the plan. He said “the dramatic reductions in AIDS cases and absolute poverty have been “sabotaged by communicable diseases, public policy and the behaviour of rich, western nations.”
“In the least developed countries in the world, primarily the majority of countries in Africa, the millennium development goals are simply no where close to being achieved.”
The UN estimates that nearly 30 million Africans now live with HIV/AIDS, of the 42 million people infected worldwide. In Africa, 4.1 million patients could benefit from generic antiretroviral drugs, but only between 25,000 and 50,000 receive the prescribed medication. The drug, AZT, which is in abundant supply in western countries, is still considered a vital component in the AIDS ‘cocktail’ treatment, according to the Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association.
In what he called the “shredding of whole sectors,” Lewis pointed out that foreign aid has dramatically dropped in most countries over years. Canada, in nine years, has dramatically fallen from 6th to 16th place out of all western countries in its contribution. It now lags far behind countries like Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and well below the “Pearsonian standard” for provisions – the 0.7 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product set in 1969.
“Canada shouldn’t be smug or complacent about these realities. Generally, there simply is no longer the full financial support and resources to the developing world in order for them to overcome the tremendous inequities that exist,” Lewis said. “The world is not only moving with a sense of detachment, but with a lack of urgency, which is unconscionable.”
A naysayer of generic drug exports, the multinational brand-name industry labelled the Canadian plan as “window-dressing,” one that will only mar Canada as an international, medical researcher and developer and eventually erode patent protection.
Canadian brand-name pharmaceutical companies also said they fear low-cost generics could be smuggled back to Europe and North America, undercutting the more expensive brand-name drugs.
In addition, critics charged that the Third World marketplace, dominated by generic drug suppliers in India and Brazil, has no room for Canadian companies. However, Lewis maintained India loses the right to provide such generics outside patents in 2005, if legislation to reproduce drugs is not reintroduced. As is the case in Brazil, India – with more than four million infected people – is experiencing a growing problem with AIDS and will need to provide treatment for its own people. Lewis said no one country has the capacity to meet the global demand for drugs.
“What Canada is doing gives hope that the supply will be sustained.”
Described as a “gift tightly bound in red tape” by some NGOs, Canada’s initiative faces a succession of hurdles both inside and outside of Parliament. The provisions allowing generic drug companies to copy and export the patented medicines, are not likely to be enacted by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s government before 2004. First, the scope of patent exemptions is expected to be negotiated with difficulty among brand-name manufacturers and Liberal lawmakers. And although trade representatives from the United States and Mexico promised not to block the Canadian export of generic drugs to developing countries, they have warned Canada to respect existing international trade rules under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“The World Health Organization’s target of putting three million people in treatment by 2005, needs to be supported desperately,” Lewis said. “There is something profoundly wrong with an international society that is so preoccupied with debt, deficits, taxes and war.”
Originally published in the Catholic New Times, October 2003
