Values, Policies and Rights

South Africa’s Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Bill, which is hoped to pave the way for the protection of the country’s traditional medicinal knowledge, has finally been passed by Parliament and is awaiting the approval of President Jacob Zuma. The bill aims to: improve the livelihoods of indigenous knowledge holders and communities, benefit the national economy, prevent bio-piracy, provide a legal framework for protection and empower local communities and prevent exploitation of indigenous knowledge. Indigenous peoples in South Africa and the rest of the world have put forward the argument that knowledge of the use of certain plants, for example, has been developed over several generations, and ask why only the present generation should benefit. They also question why some governments or corporates are reaping the rewards of indigenous knowledge through patented products when the knowledge was born from the communities of indigenous peoples. The difficulty in answering these questions, according to law experts, is that indigenous knowledge systems do not have a clearly devised timeline to the origin or source of the knowledge. It still proves very difficult for proponents of indigenous intellectual property to trump corporates wanting to capitalise on indigenous knowledge systems, more especially within a western legal framework. Meanwhile, the main critique of the new Bill is that it incorporates traditional knowledge into existing law, rather than being governed by its own separate act, which was the main objection raised during public hearings on the bill.

To commemorate World No Tobacco Day on 31 May 2012, the Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA) announced plans to increase public awareness of the tobacco industry’s aggressive marketing tactics in South Africa. Over 44,000 people are estimated to die each year from tobacco-related diseases in the country, despite advertising restriction requirements in legislation. CANSA notes that tobacco companies are targeting women and young people to become smokers, as they represent a relatively untapped market for these companies. In the past, cigarettes were made freely available and promoted at exclusive parties and evidence has come to light of specific brands promoting cigarettes in a supermarket, as well as at a restaurant, as recently as November 2011, with beautiful women used to promote and distribute free cigarettes. CANSA notes that the Tobacco Control Act restricts tobacco advertising, including ‘viral’ marketing via social media like Facebook and Twitter, which is a favoured approach to target young people. The organisation highlights the need for this law to be leveraged to stop tobacco companies from marketing their harmful products to the public.

The current system for the research and development (R&D) of new medicines does not adequately meet the needs of the majority of the world's population, argue the authors of this paper. There is a lack of new medicines for the “neglected diseases”, namely those that primarily affect populations with little purchasing power, and therefore offer an insufficient incentive for industry to invest in R&D. Despite the emergence of many new approaches to generating R&D that meets the needs of poorer populations, efforts remain ad hoc, fragmented, and insufficient. The authors discuss how an R&D treaty could complement and build on existing initiatives by addressing four areas where the system remains particularly weak: affordability, sustainable financing, efficiency in innovation, and equitable health-centered governance. They argue that effective tools for global governance are required to generate medical R&D as a global public good, based on the understanding that a politically and financially sustainable system will require both fair contributions from all, and fair benefit-sharing for all.

The World Health Organisation's Commission on Social Determinants of Health has stated that health inequities result from inequities in power, money, and resources, which in turn are based on a combination of unfair economic arrangements, poor policies and programmes and bad governance. In other words, a focus on health equity should shift to the causes of the causes. According to this article, putting health equity at the heart of policy making is a perfectly feasible goal. While there is fierce debate over economic policy in the face of huge debts faced by rich countries, with some economists calling for economic growth and others calling for reduced deficit spending, the criterion of success seeming to be a return to growth of gross domestic product (GDP). The author argues here that what is actually required are broader measures of social and economic progress than simply GDP. He calls for examination of the effects of economic policy choices on the lives people are able to lead, and hence the likely effect on health equity. When governments cut social expenditures, the effect is greatest on those at the lower end of the social hierarchy, namely those who are most dependent on cash and in-kind government expenditures. It should be of the highest priority to ensure that government policies do not unfairly increase avoidable health inequalities.