Health equity in economic and trade policies

India has one of the best patent laws in the world that still gives some space to its producers to make generic drugs. But international health organisations such as UNAIDS, UNITAID and Medicins Sans Frontieres have raised serious concerns that recent trends may threaten India’s role as the chief supplier of affordable medicines to Africa and other developing countries. The old policy space has been eroded because many new drugs since 2005 have been patented by multinational companies which are selling them at exorbitant prices. Indian companies can no longer make their own generic versions of these new medicines unless they successfully apply to the government for compulsory licences, and that is quite cumbersome; or unless they obtain a licence from the patent-owning multinational, and that usually comes with stringent conditions, especially for export. Another worry is that India is negotiating a free trade agreement with the European Union. Such agreements usually contain provisions such as data exclusivity and extension of the patent term, which prevents or hinders generic production. Finally, six Indian companies have recently been bought up by large foreign firms. If this trend continues, the Indian drug market may be dominated by multinationals again. It is uncertain whether they will continue to supply the developing world with cheap generic medicines when this may be in conflict with their own branded products.

The international trade union movement has warned of growing social unrest and increased social hardship if trade liberalisation continues against the backdrop of harsh unemployment and austerity measures. Sharan Burrow, General Secretary International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), said that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has done nothing to prevent trade imbalances growing to unsustainable levels accompanied by dangerously widening income inequality. The ITUC is calling for an evaluation of the Doha round outcomes to assess its impact on providing decent work, improved living standards and diversifying the economies of developing countries. It argues that, without measuring the impact on developing countries and workers, it makes little sense to move forward with trade liberalisation.

The fallout from United States-sponsored experiments with pandemic influenza strains has raised strong biosafety concerns and raised dilemmas for implementing the World Health Organization's Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP) Framework. Scientists in the United States (US) have created a new, potent virus, and as a result of outbreak fears, US officials have imposed a de facto moratorium on publication of the studies and are debating proposals to censor public versions of the papers, while restricting access to the scientific details to laboratories that have a "legitimate" need to know. The situation raises significant issues for the PIP Framework, which emphasises that significant research results with pandemic implications should be reported to the international laboratory system, and that novel potentially pandemic strains should be provided to the WHO System for characterisation by its laboratory network. In this case, however, it appears that the US will not be willing to share its viruses and research results with WHO Member States, contradicting its pro-sharing position taken in the negotiation of the PIP Framework.

Even though Africa’s mineral resources are fuelling growth and development in many industrialised and emerging economies of the world, Africa still remains poor, under-developed and dependent on external funding, according to Jean Noel Francois of the African Union’s Department of Trade and Industry. He was speaking at the opening of the second conference of African Ministers responsible for mineral resources and development held from 12-16 December 2011 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Mr Francois said the 21st century’s commodity boom has alerted emerging global players to link mineral resource exploitation to infrastructure development, but Africa has yet to seize the opportunity to extract better benefits from its mineral resources to promote broad-based and integrated growth and economic development. Another presenter, Stephen Karinga, expressed frustration that Africa has not benefitted from the dramatic increase in prices for minerals since 2003 due to a number of structural weaknesses in its mineral sector. According to Karingi, in 2010, net profits for the top 40 global mining companies grew by 156% to US$110 billion, prompting countries like Australia and India to increase taxes on windfall earnings, yet Africa has been hesitant to do the same for fear of driving away mining companies.