Proposed trade rules could limit AIDS drugs
Friday, November 21, 2003
MIAMI, USA (AFP): Proposed rules on intellectual property in the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement could keep cheap generic drugs to fight HIV and tuberculosis prohibitively expensive, members of the group Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday.
The US-backed proposed rules, which the group says is stricter than World Trade Organization-sanctioned guidelines, could have "catastrophic" effects, said group member Rachel Cohen.
Nearly two million people in the Americas live with full-blow AIDS, Cohen said.
Trade ministers from every country in the Americas, except Cuba, meet Thursday and Friday in Miami to work on the plan for a pan-American free market by 2005.
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