World Bank Picks Patents Over People In Bird Flu Vaccine Case

by Marwaan Macan-Markar

(IPS) -- In the face of a possible global pandemic of bird flu, the World Bank is being criticized for distancing itself from the role it has carved out over decades as an advocate of policies to help developing countries.

The bank has decided that it is not in keeping with its mission to get involved in the emerging global debate on the Tamiflu patent held by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, the only known drug capable of protecting people from the deadly H5N1 strain of the avian flu virus.

The patent stands to be broken under the compulsory licensing rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) so that countries can license the manufacture of generic versions of the drug to hold off a possible pandemic. Roche cannot produce enough of the drug quickly enough to meet the international demand.

"We do not take positions and advocate what should be happening in any of the trade negotiations," Homi Kharas, the bank's chief economist for the East Asia and Pacific region said Thursday during a teleconference between bank officials and journalists in four cities Washington, Bangkok, Phnom Penh and Hanoi.

"When there are concrete proposals on the table, we are asked how they might affect our member countries, the developing countries, and then we offer (our) analysis," he added. "We will be doing the same kind of analysis with compulsory licensing as well."

Joining the fray and calling on Roche to give up its right to the patent to save lives are ranking officials from the United Nations and a member of the U.S. Senate, Chuck Schumer.

By late October, the Swiss company had caved in and agreed to give four manufacturers of generic drugs the license to produce Tamiflu.

For years, developed countries like the United States, Canada and Australia have used compulsory licensing when faced by public health crises, according to a UN study.

Yet, developing countries have been prevented from pursuing such measures, even after a breakthrough at the WTO ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001.

Pressure by the developed world to protect the profit margins of the pharmaceutical giants has been the main reason in denying the developing world an opportunity to make the commitments at the WTO meeting in Doha a reality. It was agreed by trade negotiators at that gathering that developing nations, under the special provisions of the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), can either produce or buy cheaper generic drugs to deal with pandemics, such as HIV/AIDS.

The World Bank and other financial institutions like the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (AsDB) have expressed worry about the dismal picture that lies ahead if bird flu triggers a pandemic.

"The World Bank has been producing advocacy documents and pushing its stance on public policy issues for decades. It is no secret," Shalmali Guttal, senior researcher at the Focus on the Global South, a Bangkok-based think tank, told IPS.

She argued that the bank "should not remain non-committal" about the debate over Tamiflu and compulsory licensing. "Even if past health crises did not jog the bank's sense of ethics, at least the impending threats of pandemics from viruses such as bird flu should be enough to catalyze it to immediately call for a halt to TRIPS and patent regimes."

Asia Russell, director of international policy at the U.S.-based advocacy group, Health GAP (Global Access Project), argues along the same lines. "The World Bank should advocate, as part of its efforts to combat poverty, for countries to use their WTO legal rights to issue compulsory licenses and take other measures to ensure access to medicines for all," she said in an e-mail interview.

So far, 62 people have died out of 121 human cases of bird flu in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. But public health authorities fear that the virus could mutate to one easily transmitted among humans, triggering a global pandemic that could kill millions.

With a vaccine to prevent this pandemic years away, hope lies in Tamiflu to help the human immune system fight infections caused by the H5N1 strain of the avian flu virus.

"I suppose (the World Bank) will remain non-committal until it is pushed in one direction or the other way by the U.S., or its silence becomes untenable," said Guttal.