[Ip-health] Kenyan NGOs on Chairman's "understanding" - press statement

[Cecilia Oh]

Affordable medicines for Kenyans at risk

Nairobi, 14 February 2003. Kenya must act to prevent
reversal of public health policy gains made under the
Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health in 2001.
In ongoing negotiations in Tokyo this week, the WTO is
discussing a deal that could severely limit Kenya's
access to affordable medicines. Action Aid Kenya, MSF
and EcoNews Africa strongly urge Kenyan negotiators to
reject the TRIPS Council chairman's proposal to
restrict use of compulsory licensing for many
developing countries to "national emergencies or other
circumstances of extreme urgency".

"Here in Kenya we have made great progress in
decreasing the cost of drugs for many diseases - not
just for HIV/AIDS, but for other major public health
problems like pneumonia and diarrhoeal diseases that
kill thousands of Kenyans every year," explains Dr
Christopher Ouma, Action Aid Kenya. "The cost of some
life-saving drugs has been decreased by as much as
half. But if this current proposal goes through at the
WTO, all these gains will be lost."

According to the Doha declaration, countries are
allowed to issue compulsory licenses to access
affordable generic versions of drugs that they need to
tackle a public health problem. But some countries
don't have the capacity to make their own drugs, and
the compulsory license system is limited to the supply
of the domestic market. The current WTO negotiations
aim at solving the question of where these countries
will be able to obtain affordable sources of the
essential medicines they need. Bowing to industry
pressure, several WTO members are trying to restrict
the terms of the agreement. The current proposal is to
limit the use of compulsory licensing to "national
emergencies or other circumstances of extreme
urgency".

"Wealthy countries do not have to declare national
emergencies to make use of TRIPS safeguards, so why
should Kenya and other developing countries have to do
so", says Oduor Ong'wen, EcoNews Africa. "Will African
countries have to declare tuberculosis or malaria a
national emergency in order to get affordable drugs?"

"The adoption of the TRIPS Council chairman's proposal
would mean that countries without the possibility to
produce medicines are at a major disadvantage over
countries that do have the capacity", explains Robert
Lettington. "In theory, they could issue a compulsory
licence to address any public health problem; but in
practice, they will only be able to get supplies of
the medicines if they declare a national emergency.
Countries like Kenya would have to wait for a public
health problem to spin out of control before they can
use this solution to address it."

Although Kenya has significant pharmaceutical
industrial capacity, it is not always technically or
economically feasible for all of its essential drugs
to be manufactured at home. For this reason it is
essential that Kenya retains the right to import
affordable drugs. Like other WTO members with a
pharmaceutical industry, such as India and Brazil,
Kenya would also be restricted in its ability to
export - it would only be able to sell generic
pharmaceuticals to countries who have declared a
national emergency. This dangerous limitation could
have a major impact on Kenya's pharmaceutical industry
options for future development.

In negotiations last year, the US had already tried to
limit the agreement to a set list of diseases. This
was unacceptable, and Kenya and other developing
countries rightly rejected the notion. This current
bid by the TRIPS Council chairman to restrict the
agreement to national emergencies would be a far worse
outcome. We urge Kenya to stand firm on this issue and
reject the Chairman's proposal. Kenya has a key role
to play in convincing other members of the Africa
group to reject the Chairman's reference to
emergencies and any other attempt to limit the terms
of the agreement.

"We cannot let a handful of WTO members yield to
industry pressure and cripple developing countries'
access to life-saving medicines," states Christa
Cepuch, M=E9decins Sans Fronti=E8res.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Dr Chris Ouma, Action Aid Kenya, 0733-822766,
Christa Cepuch, MSF, 0722-393194
Robert Lettington, consultant lawyer, 0733-745540,
Oduor Ong'wen, EcoNews Africa, 0722-525990


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