Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-04-Speech-4-030"
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"en.20011004.2.4-030"2
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"Mr President, I should like to begin by commending both the Commission communication and Mr Khanbhai's report. Access to medicines will be a key issue at Doha in a few weeks' time simply because developing countries feel hugely disadvantaged by rules which are applied universally, even though countries are of unequal strength, both economically and institutionally. They will be calling clearly for the TRIPS Agreement to be applied fairly. The global spotlight, therefore, will be firmly on the role played by pharmaceutical companies in the HIV/AIDS catastrophe.
Only 0.1% of the 25 million people living with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa have access to lifesaving drugs or indeed for the drugs for the opportunistic infections such as meningitis, drug-resistant diarrhoea, oral thrush and those other infections. There are now alternatives – cheap copies of life-saving medicines. In Brazil, Thailand and India their laws allow them to ignore drug patents. In India for instance, companies are marketing a drug for the treatment of that drug-resistant diarrhoea, at 1.8% of the price charged in Pakistan where only the patented version can be bought. Four years ago Brazil waived the patent rights on HIV drugs and allowed local companies to produce cheap versions. Prices in Brazil have fallen by 80% and they have halved the number of deaths from HIV/AIDS.
I come to the point made by Mr Khanbhai on research and development. If so much commitment is made by the pharmaceutical companies to R[amp]D, how come they actually spend twice as much on marketing as they do on research and development? According to the UNDP's recent figures less than 10% of global spending on health research addresses 90% of the global disease burden. Of the 1223 new drugs marketed between 1975 and 1996, only 13 of those drugs were developed to treat tropical diseases and only 4 of those 13 were the result of the pharmaceutical industry's research. And why is it that they charge more for the same drugs in Africa, than they charge in the northern hemisphere?
I would argue that these facts very clearly speak for themselves. They have – and this is a very important point to make and it will be made in Doha – a virtual monopoly which means that they can control prices. They are virtually saying "no" to cheap, affordable generics for very sick people in poor countries. Globalisation is meant to be about freer markets and about increased competition. The big four pharmaceutical companies act like a cartel: they bully developing countries and they deny them their rights to those drugs.
During the Uruguay Round they secured agreement on patent rights for 20 years. The TRIPS Agreement was a clear example of the powerful vested interests of the developed world at this time. All this threatens the whole credibility of the World Trade Organisation and any chance we have of believing in the developments at Doha, or if we ever have a new round of fair, multilateral trading systems. There is now a clear need for a clear and new interpretation of TRIPS allowing for the flexibility which clearly exists in that agreement. We need to ensure that it is the interests of poor countries that are put first. This is an issue of fundamental social justice."@en1
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