11
October 2000 An
‘appropriate balance’ for public health Speech by WTO
Deputy Director-General Miguel Rodríguez Mendoza
“The
challenge that we all face is how to reach an appropriate
balance between sharing the high costs associated with
research and development activities and, at the same
time, sharing the results of these activities, in terms
of access to new drugs to treat the diseases prevalent in
different countries. Intellectual property rights are a
necessary part of finding that balance.”
“High Level
Round Table on accelerated action targeted at major communicable
diseases within the context of poverty reduction” Organized by the
European Commission and co-sponsored by WHO and UNAIDS,
Brussels, 28 September 2000.
I would like to make a few remarks on behalf of the
Director-General of the Word Trade Organization. I would
like to start by saying how much we welcome this
initiative taken by the Commission of the European
Communities. The need for enhanced action to deal with
the major communicable diseases, in particular HIV/AIDS,
malaria and tuberculosis, is not only important for the
people who suffer from these diseases, but also for the
development prospects of their countries and for the
international community at large. It is indeed one of the
major challenges facing us today.
We welcome in particular the fact that the Commission is
taking an integrated and interdisciplinary approach to
this problem in its new policy framework. Clearly
co-operation is required between different departments
within governments, between different countries, both
rich and poor, and between different intergovernmental
organizations. From this perspective, let me say a few
words about the role of the WTO, starting first with the
issue of intellectual property rights.
It is important to address this question both from the
angle of providing adequate incentives to research and
development and from the angle of affordable access to
new drugs. The challenge that we all face is how to reach
an appropriate balance between sharing the high costs
associated with research and development activities and,
at the same time, sharing the results of these
activities, in terms of access to new drugs to treat the
diseases prevalent in different countries.
Intellectual property rights are a necessary part of
finding that balance. They have an essential role to play
in providing incentives for research and development. No
company will invest the resources required for research
and development without a promise of some degree of
exclusivity in exploiting the results of its efforts. At
the same time, it is also clear that the intellectual
property system itself will not be sufficient to provide
incentives for research and development into the diseases
which mainly afflict the poor in developing countries,
with limited purchasing power. We thus very much welcome
the growing worldwide recognition of this and the
initiatives being taken to fill this gap, involving as
they do intergovernmental agencies, national governments
and private foundations as well as the industry itself.
The Commission’s Communication is an important
contribution in this connection.
We could say that all WTO Members have committed
themselves in some measure to support the global research
and development effort, by virtue of their acceptance of
the TRIPS Agreement. In this connection, it should be
noted that the TRIPS Agreement does not stand in the way
of that support being modulated to take into account the
capacity to contribute of different countries and the
populations within them. It is encouraging that,
increasingly, companies are willing to price their
patented products at levels which take into account this
factor and we note the support in the Commission’s
Communication for further use of differential pricing of
pharmaceuticals. This is an area that we in the WTO
Secretariat have been discussing in the context of our
cooperation with the World Health Organization, and we
are jointly preparing a workshop involving all interested
parties which would seek to examine the legal,
institutional and political environment that would favour
widespread use of differential pricing.
The TRIPS Agreement also represents an effort to find an
appropriate balance between the need to promote research
and development and the need to ensure affordable access
to the fruits of these activities. This balance is
reflected in a large number of provisions, the details of
which I will not go into now, but which provide
flexibility to governments so as to enable them to
implement their intellectual property regimes in a manner
that takes account of underlying public policy
objectives.
Moving beyond the intellectual property rights issue, let
me join the Commission in underlining that the vast
majority of drugs that are essential to treat major
communicable diseases are not under patent protection
anywhere. They are in the public domain. The fact that
these drugs and other inventions are far from fully
exploited indicates that national and international
efforts to improve financing, distribution and healthcare
infrastructure are vital. While most of these areas are
outside the competence of the WTO, we are looking, in
co-operation with other intergovernmental organizations,
at the impact of customs tariffs on the prices of
pharmaceuticals and other items important for public
health, such as bednets. We are also keen to cooperate to
maximize the extent to which the provisions of the TRIPS
Agreement relating to counterfeit products can assist in
the fight against the marketing of substandard or even
dangerous counterfeit pharmaceutical products, as is all
too often the case in some developing countries.
In this sense, let me say that we, at the WTO, are fully
convinced that there is a very strong relationship
between trade, poverty and health. We fully acknowledge
that efforts to promote basic public health as well as
public education have a vital role to play in
facilitating development. But, by the same token,
development and the increased resources that it provides
are vital for promoting public health. And an open
trading system is a key component of development efforts.
