| DEVELOPMENT REPORT –
November 26, 2001: WTO Agreement on Drug Patents
By Jill Moss
This is the VOA Special English Development
Report.
Developing countries won a major victory at
the World Trade Organization meeting earlier this month in Doha, Qatar.
The battle was over the rights of poor nations to produce life-saving
drugs during health emergencies.
More than one-hundred-forty countries attended
the Doha conference. The group finally reached an agreement after more
than a week of debate. It permits developing countries to give so-called
“compulsory licenses” during national health emergencies. A compulsory
license requires drug manufacturers to share their inventions with competing
companies.
When a drug company develops a cure or treatment
for a disease, it seeks special rights to make and sell the product.
This special permission is called a patent. A patent prevents other
companies from making the same drug for a number of years while the
patent is in force.
Under compulsory licenses, other companies are
permitted to produce low-cost generic drugs. These are copies of costly
medicines patented by large drug companies.
In the past, a lack of understanding existed
over the rights of developing countries to give compulsory licenses.
However, this issue was settled by the Doha agreement. Developing countries
are now able to give compulsory licenses when dealing with public health
crises. These include AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and diseases likely
to spread quickly through the population.
Poor countries are not able to pay for costly
drugs to treat diseases such as AIDS. So the debate over drug patents
is between rich and poor countries. International drug companies in
Europe and the United States oppose the Doha agreement. They say it
will prevent drug companies from seeking cures for diseases that affect
the poor. Drug companies say they are forced to charge high prices for
medicines to pay for the high cost of their research. Drug patents are
important because they help companies recover money spent developing
new medicines.
Developing countries, such as India, Brazil
and South Africa, support the Doha agreement. They say poor nations
should be able to produce or import less costly generic drugs in times
of health crises. They say the goal is to reduce the cost of drugs to
treat diseases that kill millions of poor people every year.
This VOA Special English Development Report
was written by Jill Moss.
| 
