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One Chance to Shake-Up the Rules Denying Affordable Drugs to Poor People - Globalization: A Closer Look - Global Policy Forum One Chance to Shake-Up the Rules
Oxfam GB
Denying Affordable Drugs to Poor People
on the World's Cities
June 15, 2001In response to public outrage, the World Trade Organisation has allowed a single day - June 20 - for countries to thrash out the "hot" issues surrounding how patents make medicines unaffordable to poor people.
"It is an unprecedented meeting that provides the best opportunity yet to begin to shift the balance of global patent rules in favour of public health," said Oxfam "Cut the Cost" campaign head Phil Bloomer.
The WTO's rich country members must use the Geneva meeting to listen to increasingly angry developing countries - many of which cannot afford the cost of new drugs and whose people are suffering needlessly and dying as a result. "The world is watching," Bloomer said. "The rich country members of the WTO - especially the US, which has until now resisted pressure to revise the TRIPS agreement - will be discredited if they don't yield ground."
"Campaigners like Oxfam are making a simple demand: change the world trade rules to allow poor countries the unambiguous right to make or buy the cheapest possible medicines, free from bullying and threats," Bloomer said. Global patent rules are being used by the rich pharmaceutical industry to thwart low-cost competition that can provide more affordable medicines to poor people. These rules are unfair, unpopular and are undermining the reputation of the WTO.
Oxfam is not against patents, but the extreme rules imposed by TRIPS are damaging the health and lives of people in poor countries. "If the rich countries don't take decisive action to reform TRIPS then the WTO runs the risk of alienating developing countries," Bloomer said. "This had disastrous results in Seattle 18 months ago. Nobody wants a repeat of this at the WTO Ministerial meeting in Qatar later this year."
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