DOHA
The Fifth Anniversary of Doha Declaration marks broken promises. Government leaders, through their inability to fulfil the promises made in the Doha Declaration, have failed millions of people around the world whose lives depend on access to essential medicines.
The Doha declaration notes that trade rules should support countries' right to protect public health, particularly "access to medicines for all".
- The declaration recognized concerns about the effect of the TRIPS Agreement on prices of medicines, but today new medicines continue be priced exorbitantly high.
- The declaration reaffirmed the right of governments to use the flexibilities of TRIPS, but now some countries are using new bilateral and regional trade agreements specifically to remove these flexibilities.
- The declaration called for a solution that would allow medicines made under compulsory licences to be exported to countries without manufacturing capacity but despite claims that this has been solved, so far no one has managed to do this.
Campaigners call for more commitment on alternative ways of balancing intellectual property rights and public health.
To read more about DOHA, please see the articles below
FIVE YEARS AFTER DOHA, DRUG PRICES ARE ON THE RISE
COUNTRIES MUST MAKE MORE USE OF TRIPS FLEXIBILITIES
Fifth Anniversary of Doha Declaration: Has the Declaration Delivered?
"Government leaders, through their inability to fulfil the promises made in the Doha Declaration, have failed millions of people around the world whose lives depend on access to essential medicines," states Marcel van Soest, executive director of the World AIDS Campaign.
Patents vs Patients
To mark the anniversary of Doha, Oxfam is hosting a high-level panel discussion that questions whether the implementation of the declaration has happened.
Access to Medicine for All: A One-pager
At the 2001 Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar, Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) adopted the groundbreaking “Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health,” which unequivocally recognised that access to medicines should have primacy over commercial interests. The Doha Declaration confirmed some of the key flexibilities in the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights(TRIPS), and encouraged countries to interpret the treaty in a manner that would protect public health and promote access to medicines for all.
