Agence France Presse Delegates preparing this weekend for an upcoming World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Doha failed to muster a coherent position on the controversial issue of providing drug access to countries suffering public health catastrophes. Delegates meeting in Geneva debated the 1994 Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which developing nations say restricts their access to generic drugs in the face of public health disasters, such as AIDS, by restricting patents for 20 years. They produced two different versions of a text that may be presented at the November conference, again dividing developing countries -- plagued by the world's worst pandemics such as AIDS -- and Western countries -- home to the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies. One version, supported by Western countries, such as the United States and Switzerland -- two of the countries where the world's largest pharmaceutical companies are based -- is tentatively entitled "Project of declaration on intellectual property and access to medicines". It warns that any WTO ministerial declaration on the accord must "neither add to nor diminish the rights and obligations of the TRIPS accord". "We affirm a member's ability to use, to the full, the provisions in the TRIPS agreement which will provide flexibility to address public health crises such as HIV/AIDS and other pandemics," it stresses. The text aimed to ensure that "a member is able to take measures necessary to address these public health crises, in particular to secure affordable access to medicines," it said. The other text, entitled "Project of declaration on intellectual property and public health", is supported by developing countries, and calls for the WTO to put public health before all else. "Nothing in the TRIPS agreement shall prevent members from taking measures to protect public health," it reads. "While reiterating our commitment to the TRIPS agreement, we affirm that the agreement shall be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of WTO members' right to protect public health." The draft declaration refers to a clause of the TRIPS agreement that allows governments to issue licenses to competitors to produce or import drugs if necessary during health emergencies if pharmaceutical companies refuse to market their patented products. Western countries, emphasizing the high cost of research and development of new drugs, have argued for a solution to the TRIPS debate that safeguards the interests of the large pharmaceutical companies who hold the drug patents. However, their stance has come into question since isolated incidences of anthrax have been reported in the United States, with Canada attempting to stock up on generic anti-anthrax drugs despite a patent held by the Germany Bayer company. The United States, along with Brazil and India -- two large producers of generic drugs -- and other WTO members have been meeting since June in an attempt to come up with an agreement that would ease developing countries' access to life-saving drugs. Ministers from the WTO's 142-strong membership are to meet in Qatar from November 9 to 13 and possibly open the way for a new round of trade talks.:
