SARS & the WTO.

(From Journal of Japanese Trade & Industry (JJTI))

Byline: Hatakeyama Noboru

The WTO (World Trade Organization) seen above is not a misprint of the WHO (World Health Organization). The WTO is going to hold its biannual Ministerial Conference next month in Cancun, Mexico. The task of the Ministerial Conference is a midterm review of the progress of the WTO negotiations since the start of the Doha Development Round in November 2001. The negotiations for this round are supposed to be finished by the end of next year. The midterm review this year is crucially important for the successful conclusion of the round. One of the most difficult issues in the negotiations is how to ensure that developing countries secure a share of the growth of world trade commensurate with the needs of their economic development. One of the concerns of developing countries is that pharmaceutical companies, especially in developed countries, might take advantage of their patents on medicines through the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of the WTO so that they can benefit from the lucrative prices of those medicines which are badly needed by patients in developing countries. To address this issue, the WTO Ministerial Conference held in Doha, Qatar in November 2001 adopted a special independent statement titled the "Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health." According to the Declaration, the Ministers recognized the "gravity of the public health problems afflicting many developing and least-developed countries, especially those resulting from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other epidemics." They also agreed that the TRIPS Agreement should not prevent Members from taking measures to protect public health. They affirmed that the Agreement should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of the WTO Members' right to promote access to medicines for all. In this context they recognized that each Member has the right to grant compulsory licenses and the freedom to determine the grounds upon which such licenses are granted. In other words, the governments of developing countries which are suffering from the rampant epidemic of HIV/AIDS, for example, can give a license for producing the AIDS vaccine to a company which wants to produce it even when the patent holder normally in the other countries does not authorize the use of that patent. In this case the company trying to obtain a license from the government, especially of a developing country, should generally make efforts to obtain authorization from the patent holder on reasonable commercial terms and conditions. However, according to the TRIPS rule of the ...