As trade ministers met last week in Lucerne, Switzerland for another round of negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), international NGO Oxfam warned that strengthening the powers of multinational drug companies to prevent generic medicines from reaching poor countries will harm the world’s poorest people. EU countries have pressed for a clause which would allow customs officials to seize medicines for patent infringement, which Oxfam points out has nothing to do with counterfeiting. EU countries have already seized legitimately traded medicines destined for developing countries, including a shipment of AIDS drugs being transported from India to Nigeria.

“Negotiating countries are cynically using legitimate fears of counterfeit medicines to exert greater control over the trade in generic medicines to poor countries,” said Oxfam spokesperson Rohit Malpani. “ACTA is proposing a new, expanded framework of intellectual property protections on behalf of multinational drug companies which will be combined with border measures to stifle the trade in legitimate generic medicines. This will mean that poor people will be denied legitimate and life-saving generic medicines.”

“The ACTA Agreement is a serious step backwards. Instead of promoting greater flexibility with intellectual property to encourage greater access to inventions and more innovation, developed countries have engaged in a secretive negotiation that amounts to a ‘resource grab’ on behalf of multinational companies,” added Malpani.

“A trade agenda that limits the legitimate movement of cheap generic medicines will hit the poorest people in developing countries disproportionately hard. The interests of big drug companies can not be put ahead of the needs of two billion people around the world who do not have access to essential medicines.”

Sources:

• Oxfam International
• IPS-Inter Press Service