Health equity in economic and trade policies

Developing country governments will struggle to invest in decent public health facilities when valuable resources are needed to service debt. However, the evidence is that debt relief works to alleviate healthcare shortages - spending on health in countries that have received debt cancellation has risen by seventy percent. The report calls for urgent action to ensure developing countries’ can provide adequate healthcare: rich countries, institutions and commercial creditors must cancel all illegitimate (i.e. due to ‘unfair or irresponsible’ lending) and unpayable debts being claimed from all poor countries, not just those eligible for the Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative; creditors should recognise debtor governments’ accountability to their own citizens, and not impose economic policies through conditions on debt relief or loans. This includes conditions limiting public spending or specifying how healthcare should be delivered; and southern governments must abide by the demands of their citizens that funds from debt cancellation be used to improve essential public services – and the governments must be open and accountable to their people over the use and monitoring of these funds.

Intellectual property rights are affecting human rights in several areas such as public health, access to knowledge and agriculture, and human rights advocates have a decisive role to play to reverse the trend, according to members of a recent panel discussion on the negative impacts of intellectual property systems. The event organised on 13 March by the International Environmental Law Research Centre (IELRC) and 3D -> Trade - Human Rights - Equitable Economy in cooperation with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, brought together speakers whose primary aim was to provide entry points and opportunities for human rights advocates to challenge the current trend in intellectual property policy-making.

EU trade chief Peter Mandelson dangled a carrot in front of SA's negotiators at the weekend, hinting at greater access to European markets in exchange for SA returning to the negotiating table to resolve a standoff over a stalled regional trade deal with the EU. But his promises may not be enough to persuade SA. SA's chief trade negotiator, Xavier Carim, said that improved market access - evidently offered on agriculture, fisheries and industrial goods - did not ease concern that EU demands would limit SA's policy options.

Given India's victory against Novartis in the drug company's challenge to section 3d of the India Patent Act and given Thailand's highly publicised campaign to issue compulsory licenses on both AIDS and heart disease medicines, we are now seeing a new wave of patent withdrawals and a growing wave of compulsory licenses. This reciprocal wave action creates a wider opening for continuing access to newer and lower costs medicines. But the promise of this opening will only be realized if more countries amend their patent acts to take advantage of the TRIPS-compliant, definitional flexibilities that India has enacted and if more countries use the TRIPS compliant flexibilities for issuing compulsory licenses for generic medicines that Thailand has used.