MANY medicines could soon be beyond the reach of ordinary Ugandans, when the current draft Bill acceding to the World Trade Organisation's agreement on trade related aspects of intellectual property rights – Trips is finally passed by parliament.

Although the TRIPS Bill contains a broad range of issues to do with property rights, of central concern is access to drugs.

Under the WTO agreement, the implementation of patent rules will commence in January 2006. Countries like India and Brazil, which currently observe no patent rules, will either cease to produce generic drugs or will price them above the purchasing power of the poor countries whom they target.

Advocates of drug access say that Uganda has allowed its patent legal review process to be commandeered by the United States Agency for International Development (USAid). 

"Generally, the law would not be in our interest," said Arthur Mpeirwe, research fellow and a programme manager concerned with intellectual proper rights and biotechnology policy for the Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE), a non-governmental organisation. "The question is not even about access, we have already signed the WTO agreement and what we are doing now is complying."

The NGO coalition for Health Promotion and Social Development (HEPS) has continuously pointed out that the involvement of USAid in the writing of the Ugandan patent laws means that the law will reflect US corporate rather than Ugandan interests.

A number of countries, including Uganda, do not have to accede to the patent deadline until 2016, but because sources of cheap drugs for Uganda, especially India, will accede by 2006, Uganda has only a year and a half of assured access to drugs.

The new patent access laws will not affect existing drugs, but experts say that newer and more effective drugs will be unaffordable to the poor. 

Civil rights activists say a lot depends on the kind of patent laws that Uganda will enact, but also suggest that the government may already have buckled under the US pressure, meaning that, eventually, the country will find it harder to access cheap and affordable drugs.

The activists say that the Ministry of Justice is waiting too long to introduce the Bill to parliament. 

"Parliament opens in February, goes on recess in May, June is budget month which goes till September, and there are many Bills or probes to be discussed and these take time," Mr Mpeirwe told The EastAfrican. "What they need to do is introduce this Bill by June so that there is enough time to debate it."

Compulsory Licensing is one of the most controversial instruments of the WTO agreement, which will allow member states to manufacture certain drugs should there be a crisis and the drugs are needed as soon and as cheaply as possible. 

This means that a country like Uganda, for which almost all diseases present a crisis, would issue a license to its pharmaceutical manufacturers to produce a drug whose copyright is held by a foreign company. 

Uganda does not have drug-manufacturing capacity but will be permitted to issue the license to a company however, in another country. India, which has been the traditional source of cheap drugs, is going to start issuing patents by 2006; this means that Uganda, like all poor countries, has been handed a tool it may not have chance to use.

With a global agreement on Trips, the likelihood is that Western pharmaceutical companies will become monopolies, controlling access to and prices of essential drugs.

Currently, the World Health Organisation's "3by5"plan to give drugs to three million people by 2005 is mired in the dispute over generic and branded drugs. The push for erecting what activists see as patent barriers, is being seen as a largely US-driven initiative. Although a number of organisations welcomed US President George Bush's $15 billion fund for Aids drugs, many now say that it was a parallel fund created to rival and even frustrate the WHO's "3by5"initiative. Mr Mpeirwe said that Uganda needed to move quickly to identify the best way of avoiding a crisis come 2006. "We have been relying on India for most of our drugs, because India does not observe the patent rights rule. When they they begin to do so, Uganda's access to these drugs is going to be affected."

Family members feed a patient at a hospital in Kampala. New patent access laws will not affect existing drugs, but newer and more effective drugs would be unaffordable to the poor. 
 

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