JURGAR / ISTOCKPHOTO.COM
Essential medicines
in developing countries
WTO fails to improve access to affordable drugs
CHUCK GASTLE AND MURDOCH MARTYN
The G20 Summit in Toronto has wrapped up
and, apart from a continuing pledge to resist
protectionism, no progress was made on trade
issues. And while not surprising, it is dis-
appointing that the World Trade Organization
(WTO) still has not improved access to essential
medicines in the developing world.
The WTO’s so-called Doha Development
Round continues to be an unobtainable goal. It
commenced in the shadow of 9/11 and was
intended to give the developing world a better
deal than it did when the WTO was formed in
1995. Nine years later, there is an absence of
political will to forge a new trade deal giving the
developing world better market access in agri-
cultural and manufacturing goods, even at the
tail end of the current recession.
The Doha Declaration on Public Health
promised to fix a barrier in the WTO’s Agreement
on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights (TRIPS). Pharmaceutical drugs are a spe-
cial case under the TRIPS regime. Pharmaceut-
ical companies strongly supported the Uruguay
Round Agreements to obtain intellectual prop-
erty laws protecting their interests. Such protec-
tion has been one of the most contentious issues
since the formation of the WTO. It was recog-
nized that the conditions imposed on compul-
sory licensing prevented any member that did
not have a domestic generic drug industry to
effectively respond to a health emergency.
The most significant problem is the restric-
tion that the goods produced must be pre-
dominantly for the supply of the domestic mar-
ket. This means that Thailand could only license
the production of drugs for use within its bor-
ders. As a result, a country without a generic
drug manufacturing capacity might be barred
from issuing any compulsory license under any
circumstances, even during a health emergency.
Chuck Gastle is a principal of Bennett Gastle
P.C., a litigation and international trade bou-
tique in Toronto. Murdoch Martyn is an inter-
national trade lawyer and in 2009-2010, taught
a course on NAFTA at Osgoode Hall Law School.
