Trading Away Health: MSF on trade and threats to access to affordable medicines

This presentation describes Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)'s concerns for threats to access to affordable medicines in trade.

Access to affordable, quality generic medicines is a critical component of treatment and global health programs. The majority of the HIV medicines that international humanitarian medical treatment provider MSF uses are generics, and MSF routinely relies on generic drugs to treat a wide range of infectious diseases. Ministries of Health and major donors and leading international treatment providers, including the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, also rely on affordable generic medicines to provide treatment to millions of people worldwide.

In spite of the proven role of generic competition in promoting access to affordable medicines and reducing prices, the U.S. government has pushed for restrictive trade policies that would make it much harder for patients, governments, and treatment providers to access generic drugs. Of particular concern are U.S. demands in trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), as well as through bilateral efforts, for developing countries to agree to create longer, stronger and broader patent and regulatory monopoly protections on medicines. These monopoly protections keep price-lowering competitors out of the market and medicines prices high.