EU actions 'threaten universal access to medicines in developing countries,' AIDS meeting told

Treatment activists and legal experts gathered at the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria, are calling on the European Union to immediately stop its aggressive push for higher intellectual property protection and enforcement through various bilateral and multilateral forums that threaten access to safe, effective and affordable generic HIV medicines.

'The EU is negotiating or planning to negotiate free trade agreements with over 90 developing countries and is pushing these countries to accept TRIPS [Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights]-plus provisions. Some TRIPS-plus provisions that the EU has been pushing are data exclusivity, patent term extension and higher enforcement standards. These provisions will translate into huge costs for developing countries. For instance, the data exclusivity provision in the Central American Free Trade Agreement resulted in a 845600% increase in the prices of medicines in Guatemala,' said Sanya Reid Smith of the Third World Network.

Highlighting the importance of access to medicines as an integral part of the right to health, Anand Grover, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, said: 'Developed and developing country governments have a clear obligation under international human rights law to respect, protect and fulfil the right to health, which includes the right to access medicines. Over the past few years, we have been able to make vital gains in increasing access to anti-retrovirals for people living with HIV in developing countries with pro-health intellectual property laws. Increasing the standards of intellectual property protection and enforcement, beyond countries' current obligations under the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, will have an adverse impact on the affordability and availability of medicines and undermine these vital gains. Developed and developing countries alike need to ensure that their trade agreements do not lead to such increased standards, which violate their obligations under international human rights law.'