S Africa urges WTO pro-health TRIPs move

The World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Qatar this monthshould revise the WTO Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement, to "allow countries from the south to gain better access to affordable medicines to ensure universal health care is not a luxury but a human right," South African Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, has said. "It is a crime against humanity for poor people to die because life-saving medicines are too expensive," she added.

Her statement came after WTO officials, meeting last month in Geneva, Switzerland, ahead of the Qatar conference, failed to reach a compromise on demands from developing countries that the ministerial meeting should include a declaration that nothing in TRIPS should stop governments taking measures to protect public health.

Dr Tshabalala-Msimang noted that TRIPS does allow countries to obtain cheaper generic drugs in cases of national health emergencies (a provision which South Africa has so far failed to exploit to deal with its HIV/ AIDS epidemic), but claimed that the drug industry "continues to intimidate and penalize those countries that explore the use of these legitimate clauses."