[Ip-health] Inter Press Service News (IPS): WHO Assembly to Face Controversies Over Patents, Taiwan

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=3D33300

HEALTH:
WHO Assembly to Face Controversies Over Patents, Taiwan
Gustavo Capdevila

*GENEVA, May 19 (IPS) - The most controversial debates at the 59th World
Health Assembly will involve the question of intellectual property
rights and health, and Taiwan's request to participate as an observer. *

During its May 22-27 session, the Assembly - the decision-making body of
the World Health Organisation (WHO) - will also discuss questions like
the eradication of poliomyelitis, the destruction of the smallpox virus
stocks, the spread of avian flu, and the international migration of
health personnel.

Denis Aitken, adviser to WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook,
acknowledged the difficulty presented by the debate on intellectual
property rights and health, an issue that has been the focus in recent
months of a report commissioned by the WHO itself, and of a proposal set
forth by the governments of Brazil and Kenya.

The report by the independent Commission on Intellectual Property
Rights, Innovation and Public Health recommended, for example, that
governments avoid any stipulation in bilateral free trade treaties that
could reduce access to medicines on the part of developing countries.

The conclusions reached by the Commission, which was headed by former
Swiss president Ruth Dreifuss, revealed the differences between its
members, which were outlined in an annex to the report signed by experts
who adhered to positions taken by the pharmaceutical industry or by
different developing countries.

The 59th Assembly of health ministers from WHO's 192 member states will
discuss the Commission's recommendations as well as the proposal drafted
by Brazil and Kenya, which suggests the creation of a working group to
study the establishment of a global framework for supporting R&D on
medicines consistent with public interest needs.

The "Global Framework on Essential Health Research and Development"
proposed by Brasilia and Nairobi has to do with criticism by scientific
and humanitarian groups of global health R&D as backed by the
pharmaceutical industry and industrialised countries, which dedicate 90
percent of investment to address the medical needs of 10 percent of the
world population.

The initiative submitted by Brazil and Kenya calls for the new working
group to propose to the WHO the adoption of intellectual property
protection systems that would increase access by developing countries to
health innovations and medicines.

"You would expect that the WHO, responsible for improving health in the
world, would be the organisation that would be the leader in this
field," said Rowan Gillies, president of the International Council of
M=E9decins Sans Fronti=E8res' (MSF). But "today that's not the case."

For that reason, the MSF and other international humanitarian
organisations launched the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDI).

Former MSF president Bernard P=E9coul, who now heads the DNDI, told IPS
that the initiative was pressing for significant efforts and resources
to go towards R&D of medicines and treatment for "forgotten" diseases
like trypanosomiasis, leishmaniosis and malaria.

The DNDI currently involves five public sector institutions - the
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation of Brazil, the Indian Council for Medical
Research, the Kenya Medical Research Institute, the Malaysian Ministry
of Health and France's Pasteur Institute - as well as the MSF and the
UNDP/World Bank/WHO's Special Programme for Research and Training in
Tropical Diseases (TDR), as a permanent observer.

The initiative is similar to the movement led by Brazil and South Africa
in the late 1990s in favour of the primacy of health over trade.

MSF and other independent humanitarian organisations like Oxfam and
Focus on the Global South joined that effort, which achieved the
adoption of the Declaration on the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of
Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and Public Health at the November
2001 World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial conference in Doha.

The document, considered an important step forward in the campaign for
affordable medicines, affirmed the primacy of public health over
intellectual property rights, and the rights of governments to make full
use of the public health safeguards in TRIPS.

Brazilian representative Guilherme Patriota said "it would be
interesting to see a similar process" now.

"That is what we are trying to do," Pedro Saldanha, another official
with the Brazilian mission in Geneva, told IPS. "It depends on the
outcome of the Assembly, but that's the idea."

Governments, and in this particular case WHO, must define R&D
priorities, argued P=E9coul. "Today setting priorities for research is not
a key activity of WHO, except when they are under pressure as is now the
case with the avian flu," added the executive director of DNDI.

Of the 105 billion dollars dedicated to global health R&D annually, 90
percent focuses on diseases that affect just 10 percent of the world
population, said P=E9coul.

"There is a lack of leadership, a lack of investments in terms of
funding from major governments," he added.

Gillies complained that there is currently no "useful diagnosis test for
tuberculosis, especially for people with HIV/AIDS. It's an incredible
situation because that's the disease that kills most people with AIDS in
the world."

In the meantime, the international pharmaceutical industry continues to
do more and more business in the industrialised world. The global market
for pharmaceutical products grew seven percent in 2005, to 602 billion
dollars.

Of that total, some 265 billion dollars in drugs went to North America,
nearly 170 billion to Europe, 60.3 billion to Japan, 46.4 billion to the
countries of Africa, Asia (except for Japan and China) and the Pacific,
24 billion to Latin America, and the rest to China.

Patriota said changes to international treaties promoted by the private
sector, through bilateral agreements and other means, have led to
increasing standards of protection of intellectual property rights.

In these conditions, "governments of developing countries have their
hands tied," said the Brazilian diplomat.

The pharmaceutical companies "are very strong politically and they can
actually manoeuvre weaker governments in developing countries and
pressure them against taking any real effective action that may threaten
their interests," such as attempting to control the prices of access to
medicines or producing generic drugs.

Another touchy issue, Taiwan's request for observer status in the World
Health Assembly, is unlikely to see any change from previous years, when
it was turned down, said Aitken.

A resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1971
recognised only China as a member of the world body, thus expelling Taiwan.

Since then, Taiwan's petitions to take part in the World Health Assembly
as an observer have failed to prosper.

Only 25 countries - 24 of which are WHO members - recognise Taiwan as an
independent state. The remaining 147 members of the global health body
only recognise China. "So the balance of the member states is very
clearly in favour of the Chinese position, which is that =91there is one
China'," said Aitken.

Chao-chin Huang, secretary of the Taipei Representative Office in
Belgium, pointed out to IPS that "the WHO constitution enshrines the
principle that the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of
health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being."

"Under this principle, the 23 million people in Taiwan should have the
same rights as all other human beings to normal and regular access to
the WHO system," argued the official, on a visit this week to Geneva.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) also expressed concern
that WHO had refused to accredit Taiwanese journalists at the Assembly.

According to IFJ president Christopher Warren, the refusal "is
discriminatory and is undermining the ability of the Taiwanese media to
cover world affairs."

"Journalists are independent individuals and should not be seen as
representatives of their country of origin," argued the IFJ in a
statement. (END/2006)