/SOCIAL SUMMIT 2000/ DEVELOPMENT: US Blocks Cheap AIDS-Fighting Medicines

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jun 28 2000 (IPS) - One of the critical issues taken up by the United Nations (UN) Social Summit, underway here this week, is how to provide medicine and treatment for the millions of people facing death from HIV/AIDS, but it hit a snag Wednesday in Working Group II when the United States objected to a proposal by a group of developing countries.

The delegation from South Africa, a country that could lose a quarter of its labour force to the AIDS epidemic, condemned the indifference expressed by the United States and other governments as they stand in the way of solutions promoted by the developing South.

The controversy takes on greater significance coming just after the UNAIDS programme released its report Tuesday on the expansion of the disease, announcing that HIV/AIDS caused 5.4 million deaths worldwide in 1999 alone.

The initiative of the Group of 77 (G-77), a coalition of developing nations, is an attempt to subordinate intellectual property rights, reflected in pharmaceutical patents, to international human rights, especially when it comes to access to medicines and lowering their prices.

The G-77 text proposes the exclusion of patent rights for medications deemed essential and fundamental for saving the lives of AIDS patients. This will allow the distribution of these medicines at accessible prices, says the document.

Developing nations demand recognition of the fact that intellectual property rights under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) do not take precedence over other human health-related rights.

The demand of the developing South specifically points to the right to high-quality health services, recognised by numerous instruments of international humanitarian law.

The initiative also appeals to the ethical responsibility of providing life-saving medications at accessible prices for developing countries and populations living in poverty.

At the centre of the controversy are the pharmaceutical patents that transnational laboratories attempt to enforce throughout the world, particularly as established by TRIPS, under the neoliberal legal legislation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Most countries of the South see the TRIPS Agreement as being “insufficiently attentive to development needs,” according to a report released this week in Geneva by Centro Sur (the South Centre), authored by Carlos Correa, of the University of Buenos Aires.

Correa maintains that the national legislative reforms required in developing countries to adapt them to TRIPS norms on pharmaceuticals create tensions due to their consequences on access to medicine and on public health policies.

In addition to the United States objection, Canada, Japan and Australia also opposed the G-77 initiative during the debate taking place during this special UN General Assembly on development, also known as Copenhagen Plus Five.

Delegates from the European Union (EU), which also rejected the South-led proposal, presented an alternative text saying it was sufficiently flexible to adapt to the items included in the G-77 initiative.

The United States representatives alleged, according to unofficial sources, that the G-77 proposal introduced issues related to human rights and other technical questions that would require broader consultation with experts in the field.

The South African delegation responded saying such indifference was not appropriate given that several nations in southern Africa could lose 25 percent of their workforce to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The South African representatives stressed that AIDS medications are critical in fighting the epidemic and that eliminating the G-77 proposal would only mean greater disaster.

Mercia Andrews, president of a coalition of South African non-governmental organisations (NGOs), said her group is pressuring governments and the private sector to adopt a joint strategy to combat the disease.

If a solution is not found soon, she said, the impact of the disease on the economy in the next decade will be devastating.