Ethics Newsline®

GENEVA
The World Trade Organization (WTO) last week announced a long-awaited breakthrough deal that will deliver generic drugs to developing nations, rejecting Western concerns after an impassioned plea from Africa.

The deal, which allows poor countries facing humanitarian crises caused by diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria to import controversial generic versions of patented drugs, had been two years in the making.

The Western firms that hold the patents have long objected to such generic imports, insisting that high profit margins are needed to fund the development of new drugs and justify the work invested in old ones.

But as AIDS deaths skyrocket in Africa, the companies have come under withering criticism and international pressure — factors that helped propel the companies to work toward some low-cost compromise, reported the Reuters news agency.

Early last week, that deal looked promising, with all sides — the United States (representing Western firms), Brazil and India (generic drug makers), and South Africa and Kenya (developing nations) — in agreement.

At week’s end, however, several Western nations balked, putting the deal in peril. Sensing that a last-minute defeat was imminent, African representatives pleaded for the 146-nation WTO to put humanitarian needs above corporate concerns. The WTO acceded, according to Reuters.

“For us, the request by the African countries was a decisive factor,” Brazilian ambassador Luiz Felipe de Seixas Correa told Rueters. “All of us couldn’t fail to be touched by that.”

The pact allows poorer nations to bypass international patent laws only “in good faith to protect public health,” not as an “instrument to pursue industrial or commercial policy objectives,” according to a draft statement.

The arrangement also calls on developing nations to take steps to block the generic versions of expensive drugs from being smuggled into Western nations, according to the Associated Press.