S Africa's Drug Bill Plans "A Third World Trap"

South Africa's National Assembly Portfolio Committee on Health has begunhearings on Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma's resubmitted Medicines and Related Substances Control Amendment Bill (Marketletter September 1), with only the Department of Health suggesting that it should be approved.

The bill has been slammed by the drug industry, business, doctors, the Pharmacy Council and the Medicines Control Council. Also, all six opposition parties have urged Dr Zuma to withdraw the bill, which would give her sweeping powers to abrogate patent rights and import drugs from countries where they had been made without the consent of the patent holder.

MCC chairman Peter Folb accused the DoH of reneging on agreements with the MCC. He said the bill would have disastrous repercussions on drug quality and undermine the policy it was supposed to reinforce. He feared some of its clauses would harm the medicines control process and set the scene for unacceptable double standards. Once these were set, the situation would become unmanageable, effectively allowing Dr Zuma to reverse MCC regulations and decisions and ignore its input in making new regulations.