Over the past ten years, the World Health Organization (WHO) has actively engaged in the discussion on TRIPS and Public Health. The WHO’s work in analyzing the TRIPS Agreement has been helpful in the efforts to ensure that intellectual property and trade policy at the WTO take into account the aim of better health outcomes. Pharmaceuticals and their associated technologies and treatment regimes are at the core of all public health delivery systems; policies that affect their availability and affordability directly impact on public health outcomes. It is thus clearly within the WHO’s mandate to intervene in policy discussions and debates which implicate its core public health mission.
However, the moderate success achieved in the Doha Declaration, which established that “the TRIPS Agreement should not prevent members from taking measures to protect public health, is in danger of being reversed. Policy is being made in bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) that directly affects the ability of countries and individuals to access medicines at low cost and to utilize the flexibilities and policy space available under TRIPS. The past five years since the Doha Declaration have seen a significant increase in the number of FTAs with extensive intellectual property provisions. The vast majority of these FTAs are between major industrialized economies and less well-resourced developing countries. The US has concluded FTAs with 10 partners and has entered negotiations with 8 further countries. The EU has concluded FTAs with Chile, Mexico and South Africa and has ongoing negotiations with Mercosur, with the six nation Gulf Cooperation Council and future negotiations with Central American and Andean Community countries. Also of serious concern is the fact that the EU is negotiating reciprocal trade agreements with regional groups of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries, many of whom are least developed economies.