GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Trade Organization finally agreed Saturday to let poorer nations import cheaper generic drugs to fight killer diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, ending an often bitter, long-running row.
The pact plugs a gap in world trade law and allows countries unable to produce their own medicines to override patent rights and import cheap generic drugs under certain circumstances.
WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi said it showed the body "fully respects and protects humanitarian concerns."
The accord, hammered through the WTO's 146-member executive General Council, seeks to reassure patent-owning multinational firms their rights will be protected, while helping poor states fight diseases that kill millions each year, mainly in Africa.
"It will enable them to make full use of the flexibilities in the WTO intellectual property rules in order to deal with the diseases that ravage their peoples," Supachai said.
A plea Friday by African states, who said thousands were dying as trade envoys bickered, got the talks back on track after last-minute problems hit the deal that had been approved Thursday by the WTO's main negotiating body on patents.
"It's especially good news for the people of Africa who so desperately need access to affordable medicines," said Kenya's representative to the WTO, Amina Mohamed.
The United States and European Union also applauded the deal, but health activists said too many strings were attached.
ALLAYS CONCERNS
"Today's WTO agreement that is ostensibly intended to get drugs to the poorest countries does not provide a workable solution," Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF, Doctors without Borders) and Oxfam said in a joint statement.
As most African states were already exempt from WTO patent obligations for years to come and even India, a major exporter of generics, won't be affected until 2005, the immediate legal impact of Saturday's decision is probably slight, envoys said.
But it should raise competition between generic producers, some of whom were reluctant to commit to long-term investment, and patent holders, driving down world prices that are still way out of reach for most of Africa's millions of AIDS sufferers.
"It acts as a negotiating leverage to make medicines available more cheaply," South African trade envoy Faizel Ismail said.
The deal took the form of a statement to accompany a more detailed text already approved by all WTO members except the United States, home to many drugs majors, in December.
The statement sought to allay U.S. concerns that waivers might be abused for commercial gain by generic drug makers in developing countries such as Brazil and India.
Washington feared they could turn out highly profitable lifestyle remedies such as the impotence drug Viagra for sale in richer developing nations and act as a disincentive to the research and development necessary to produce life-saving drugs.
Steps will be taken to ensure medicines sold to poor countries do not turn up on rich-country markets, and a number of richer developing countries -- such as Mexico and South Korea -- agree to use the system only in dire health emergencies.
Existing world trade rules allow countries with their own drugs industry to waive patents and issue compulsory licenses to generic manufacturers when they face health emergencies, but say nothing about states without their own drugs industry.
A deal before a major trade meeting in the Mexican resort of Cancun in less than two weeks was seen as vital to giving new momentum to the WTO's struggling Doha Round of free trade talks.
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