What is the Doha Declaration?

World Trade Organization (WTO) members passed the plan "Declaration on TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Right) Agreement and Public Health" in November of 2001 in Doha, Qatar. The Doha Declaration allows developing countries to manufacture generic drugs and override patents held by major pharmaceutical in times of national health crises. This marks the first WTO acknowledgement that prices of drugs manufactured by these large patent-holding companies are preventing access to medicine in developing countries. Under the TRIPS Agreement, there are certain procedures that governments are required to follow when they decide to invoke TRIPS using compulsory licensing. As TRIPS can only be invoked in case of a public health emergency, the respective governments are simultaneously expected to initiate an expedited procedure for addressing the health emergency. The individual governments themselves define what an emergency is and this gets monitored by the Director-General at WHO.

The task of developing intellectual property (IP) systems worldwide is a responsibility of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). After the Doha Declaration was put into effect by the WTO, the WIPO was entrusted with the task of monitoring the success of the Doha Declaration in developing countries in terms of its benefits. According to initial follow-up studies conducted by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Non Governmental Organizations (NGO), WIPO's advice to the developing countries was hurting their ability to maximize the new options created for them by the Doha Declaration. These countries were implementing protections on intellectual property that were more stringent than was advisable based upon their states of public heath. Because of this, the Doha Declaration was not serving its primary purpose: medicine was not truly being made available to all.

The Doha Declaration also granted the developing countries a 10 year extension to institute and honor patents on pharmaceuticals. This was the developing countries' opportunity to take advantage of the declaration and have new national legislations for medicines and patents implemented.

Also included in the Doha Declaration was a clause in which the WTO stated that poor countries that do not have the manufacturing capacity to produce their own drugs would not be able to obtain generics through compulsory licensing. These countries are currently only able to obtain generic medication through the use of parallel importing from developing countries that have the production capacity. However, they may only do this until 2005 after which their sole source of affordable medicine will be taken away. The reason for this is in a clause in the TRIPS provisions that states generics that are produced under compulsory licensing are for use in the domestic market. Therefore, they should not be exported. This means that developing countries that rely upon the exports from other developing countries will not be able to get their medications anymore. This is known as the "paragraph six problem" of the Doha Declaration. It is ironic that although the Declaration was implemented to protect patients' rights over patent rights it has many complicated clauses that limit the very poorest countries, those who do not have the manufacturing capacity to make pharmaceuticals yet need them the most, from obtaining affordable drugs. The WTO needed to resolve the paragraph six problem.

The negotiations held in Geneva throughout 2002 were intended to solve this problem. Rich, patent-holding companies were backtracking on the promises made at Doha in 2001. The US had stood isolated on this issue at these Geneva meetings, raising concerns on the definition of a public health emergency and what conditions would trigger the compulsory licensing provision. They effectively sought to keep the list of public health emergencies as a list of no more than 15 odd diseases. After intense disagreements, US Trade Representative intransigence led to the breakdown of negotiations in the TRIPS Council in December, 2002. Despite the fact that all 143 of its WTO trading partners had agreed to a compromise solution, the US alone refused to agree with the deal.

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To read more about the Doha Declaration please visit the WTO site