WTO prepares for formal review of TRIPs generic medicines deal
Developing countries question whether the system is working
A review of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) compulsory licensing system for generic medicines in health emergencies will be staged this October.
The chair of the WTO’s TRIPs council (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights) is consulting member countries about whether to hold a preparatory workshop on the issue.
Many developing countries question whether the system – designed to deliver medicines cheaply and quickly to a health hotspot – is working. They pointed out at a recent TRIPs council meeting that despite being approved in 2003, it still has been used only once and delivery then took two years: Canada exporting to Rwanda through Torono-based Apotex.
A WTO official told Manufacturing Chemist that some developed countries argued the opposite – that one case proves nothing – as does the delivery time. The Canadian government said despite receiving fast-track approval for a generic consignment, Apotex took more than a year to find an interested importing country; two months to request a voluntary licence, then two weeks to receive a compulsory licence. Rwanda’s public tender for the medicines took eight months to complete; and finally production and delivery took five months. As a result, developed countries argue, the delays were ‘not caused by the [compulsory licensing] system but by other factors’.