Ambassadors from member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have been holding informal negotiations in a final effort to reach an agreement on the implementation of paragraph six of the 2001 Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health before the WTO's Fifth Ministerial Conference on 10-14 September 2003 in Cancun, Mexico1-4. Under TRIPS, patents may be overridden in cases of public health crises, including those relating to HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, but the agreement does not address situations where those countries lack the manufacturing capacity to produce the medicines locally. As there are no provisions for products prepared under compulsory licence to be exported or imported, paragraph six instructed the TRIPS Council to seek a solution to this issue that would be agreeable to both the pharmaceutical sector and developing countries.
According to the WTO, members had hoped to reach an agreement before the 25-26 August 2003 meeting of the WTO General Council, as this was the last meeting before the...