Rich Countries blocking Cheap Drugs for Developing World(UK)

[katty]

Rich Countries "Blocking Cheap Drugs for Developing World"
By Sarah Boseley
The Guardian UK

Tuesday 14 November 2006

excerpt: http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/111406HA.shtml#

Five years to the day after the Doha declaration - a groundbreaking deal to give poor countries access to cheap drugs - was signed at the World Trade Organisation, Oxfam says things are worse.

The charity accuses the US, which champions the interests of its giant pharmaceutical companies, of bullying developing countries into not using the measures in the Doha declaration and the EU of standing by and doing nothing. Doha technically allows poor countries to buy cheap copies of desperately needed drugs but the US is accused of trying to prevent countries such as Thailand and India, which have manufacturing capacity, making and selling cheap generic versions so as to preserve the monopolies of the drug giants.

"Rich countries have broken the spirit of the Doha declaration," said Celine Charveriat, head of Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign. "The declaration said the right things but needed political action to work and that hasn't happened. In fact, we've actually gone backwards. Many people are dying or suffering needlessly."

[msongs]

1. also blocking cheap drugs for AMERICANS as well since pharma

spends as much on advertising as it does on research, according to PBS frontline special last year.

msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm