The United States was on Tuesday accused by France of blackmailing developing countries into giving up their right to produce cheap drugs for Aids victims.
“Making certain countries drop these measures in the framework of bilateral trade negotiations would be tantamount to blackmail, since what is the point of starting treatment without any guarantee of having quality and affordable drugs in the long term?” Chirac wrote in a statement that was read to the international Aids conference in Bangkok on Tuesday.
Mireille Guigaz, France’s global ambassador on Aids, said: “It is a question between the US and developing countries, and the way the US wants to put pressure on developing countries who try to stand up for their own industries. We do not wish countries’ hands [to be] tied by bilateral agreements.”
The deal, completed at Cancun, lets poor countries buy cheap, generic copies of patented drugs from the makers in India, Brazil and Thailand. Aids drugs were hugely expensive before such firms made their copies and brought the prices down from $10 000 a patient a year to less than $300.
According to the World Health Organisation, six million people in poor countries need anti-retroviral treatment but only 440 000 are getting it.
On Monday, a report from Oxfam warned that bilateral agreements are set to do great damage to the fight against Aids in Thailand, where the government has so far been able to administer generic versions of Aids drugs made by its own government pharmaceutical organisation (GPO). Thailand has said it intends to export its copies to neighbouring countries.
The agreements already signed extend patent protection beyond 20 years, Oxfam said, and limit a government’s ability to allow its own generic companies to make copies of patented drugs and import generic versions.
“Oxfam shares the concerns of Thai NGOs that a free trade agreement with the US, containing unnecessarily high intellectual property standards, will seriously undermine future access to affordable medicines in Thailand,” says the report.
Xavier Darcos, the French Minister of Cooperation and Development, said France wants to see a global agreement on access to medicines and favours any agreement that allow “the countries in most need to access drugs, ideally free, or else produce them”.
Chirac, in his statement, also called for the US to put more money into the Global Fund to Fight HIV/Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
“We should ensure the sustainability of the fund’s financing and raise its resources to $3-billion a year by sharing this effort among Europe, the United States and all the other donors.”
The United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, said he thought that the US contribution of $500-million to the global fund should have been $1-billion of the $15-billion the Bush administration had pledged for Aids projects.
US accused of Aids blackmail
Theres always a catch when it comes to dealing with the Amerikkans!