Rwanda makes landmark use of WTO rule on drug import
Afp, Geneva
Rwanda has become the first country to resort to a four year-old rule that allows governments to waive patent protection and import more affordable generic copies of medicines to deal with major diseases, the WTO said Friday. Rwanda informed the World Trade Organisation on July 17 that it intended to import 260,000 packs of Triavir, a treatment for HIV/AIDS made in Canada that combines three anti retroviral drugs, the WTO said in a statement. It is the first nation to fully implement an agreement adopted by the WTO's members in August 2003, which was initially hotly contested by wealthy nations with major pharmaceutical industries. The agreement supplemented an earlier 2001 deal -- which allowed individual patents to be suspended by poor countries facing health emergencies -- by granting generic producer nations the right to sell copies of patented drugs to countries that are unable to produce them.
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