'Drugs access to test WTO credibility in poor nations'

Sydney (Agence France-Presse): Providing poor countries with access to patented medicines is the most crucial issue facing this week's informal meeting of trade ministers in Sydney, according to Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile.

"If all Sydney achieves is that it is a catalyst and we precipitate an acceptable outcome on this issue, then it will have been an outstanding success," Vaile said of the Thursday-Friday meeting of 25 trade ministers.

Currently rules set down by the 140-nation World Trade Organization (WTO) restrict trade in cheaper generic versions of patented drugs made in developing countries to protect the intellectual property rights of pharmaceutical companies.

The charity Oxfam estimates that generic drugs cost about one-third the price of their brand-name counterparts made in the West.

Oxfam spokesman Federico Monsalve said developing nations could only afford to fight epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria with the generic drugs.

But he said the pharmaceutical companies that originally developed the treatments were fighting to restrict access to the drugs, fearing their lucrative Western markets would be swamped with cheap imports.

"We believe that basic human rights such as health should come before the profits of drug companies," Monsalvo said.

"You've got to consider this from the perspective of somewhere like Kenya, where 500 people die from AIDS-related illness every day because they can't get proper medicines."

The WTO wants the impasse broken by the end of the year and Vaile said this week's meeting of trade ministers from 25 WTO members was one of the last chances for developing nations and the world's three largest drug manufacturers — the United States, European Union and Switzerland — to thrash out their differences.

"We must deal with this issue to maintain the confidence from the developing world that they arc being included, involved and their issues are being dealt with by this organisation, "Vaile said.

WTO rules governing the sale of generic drugs are known as trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, or TRIPS.

They allow developing nations to manufacture generic drugs for domestic use, but not to export them to other poor countries.

Monsalvo said the export restriction was an "absurd and damaging anomaly' which meant developing countries with no manufacturing capability had to import expensive branded medicines from the West.

The Sydney meeting will consider three proposals. maintaining the status quo, scrapping the export ban so drugs between one another hut not to the West, and a compromise proposal where the export ban would be lifted on a case-by case basis.

If agreement is reached the trade ministers will then make recomendations that Vaile said were likely to be adopted by the broader WTO, comprising more than 140 countries. Meanwhile, anti-globalisation protesters gathering here for a demonstration outside the

WTO conference were warned by police Wednesday not to try to take over buildings.