[Ip-health] WTO Reporter: President Bush Says U.S. Still Working To Secure Agreement on Low-Cost Medicines

[James Love]

BNA: WTO-Reporter, Thursday, July 10, 2003, ISSN 1529-4153

President Bush Says U.S. Still Working To Secure Agreement on Low-Cost
Medicines

President Bush said July 9 that the United States is continuing to work
with South Africa and other countries to reach agreement on a "common-
sense policy" that would allow developing countries to obtain essential
medicines at low cost while it fully protected the intellectual property
rights of pharmaceutical manufacturing companies.

"[W]e will continue to work with South Africa, as well as other
countries," he said, "to see if we can't reach a common-sense policy
that, on the one hand, protects intellectual property rights, and on the
other hand, makes life-saving drugs or treatment drugs for, in some
cases, life-saving, in some cases that are proper for treatment more
widely available at reasonable costs."

U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick has said that companies
were looking to resolve the issue prior to the next ministerial meeting
of the World Trade Organization, scheduled for Sept. 10-14 in Cancun,
Mexico.

But President Bush, speaking at a news conference in Pretoria, South
Africa, on July 9 after meeting South African President Thabo Mbeki,
said that work was still continuing to settle the dispute, which has
pitted the United States essentially against the rest of the world.

The United States last December blocked agreement on the issue at the
WTO, arguing that a decision proposed at the time--supported by nearly
other WTO members--was too broad and could undermine patent rights for a
wide range of pharmaceutical products.

Zoellick told reporters after a WTO "mini-ministerial" meeting in Sharm
el-Sheikh, Egypt, June 22 that he was discussing the issue with
pharmaceutical companies "from all over the world" to try to facilitate
a solution.

He said that he was also talking with countries that are concerned with
the issue, including African nations and India and Brazil.

Zoellick said that the pharmaceutical companies have narrowed their
differences and concerns to focus on the possible risks associated with
the export of licensed generic drugs from a limited number of countries
and their potential diversion to other markets.

"It's a reasonable concern for abuse," Zoellick said. "[The
pharmaceutical companies] don't want to have loopholes that would then
codify that allow others to take advantage of this and thereby do away
with IPR, so that you don't develop these drugs in the future."

Other U.S. officials have said that the United States has dropped its
earlier proposal to limit the scope of coverage under any future WTO
agreement on compulsory licenses for imports to a specific list of
diseases--HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases
of similar gravity.

Zoellick, however, did not mention the shift in policy during his
meeting with reporters following the WTO "mini-ministerial" meeting in
Egypt last month.

By Gary G. Yerkey