The "health safeguards" built into the Trade-related Aspects of
Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) convention allow for compulsory
licensing - manufacturing a drug without the patent holder's permission
- and for parallel imports - importing a drug from another country
where it is sold at a lower price - in case of an health emergency.
Aware of the existence of this Damocles sword, the European Union and
the trans-national pharmaceutical lobby have come out last May in favor
of "global tiered pricing".
In its 2001 Human Development Report (HDR), the United Nations
Development Program (UNDP) called to introduce differential rich versus
poor country pricing for "essential high-tech products" as well. The
Health GAP Coalition commented on the report:
"On the issue of differential pricing, the Report notes that, while an
effective global market would encourage different prices in different
countries for products such as pharmaceuticals, the current system does
not. With high-tech products, where the main cost to the seller is
usually research rather than production, such tiered pricing could lead
to an identical product being sold in poor countries for just
one-tenth-or one-hundredth- the price in Europe or the United States.
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