Oxfam International and Health Action International have released a report on the customs drug seizures of the past year, intercepted in Europe on their way to developing countries. “The report comes just as some countries, including India and Brazil, are set to file a complaint against the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, with the World Trade Organization,” the Kaiser Family Foundation reports.

The report is available on the Oxfam website: http://www.oxfam.org/en/policy/trading-away-access-medicines

Furthermore, a World Trade Organisation audio link is now available for Médecins sans Frontières’ workshop on September 30th, Controversy at customs – the detention of medicines in transit: what impact on access to medicines? The workshop was part of the WTO Public Forum 2009. IDA Foundation was represented by Managing Director Edwin de Voogd, who participated as a member of the panel of respondents.

IDA Foundation’s statement of concern:
IDA is a large non-for-profit organisation active in the procurement, supply chain management and distribution of essential medicines, (incl. ARVs, anti-TB and anti malarials) world-wide in developing countries. Our partners include the Global Drug Facility, the Clinton Foundation, MSF, and we additionally act as a humanitarian procurement centre for ECHO. We serve approx. 750 other public sector bodies and NGO’s in less developed countries.

IDA was founded in 1972, we have a turnover of approx. €100 million and accessibility, affordability and quality stand as the pillars of our organization.

Today, accessibility and affordability go hand in hand with generics. The lion’s share (80-90%) of our high quality generics are manufactured in India. As a result, the recent seizures and their apparent random character are our major concern.

Recipient developing countries are very vulnerable when it comes to a secure supply of medicine. Due to a lack of funding, there is often no safety stock, no alternative medicine and some treatment regimens, such as those for HIV or TB are very sensitive to resistance caused by an interruption in treatment. As a result, we can say that virtually every delay in the supply chain is life threatening. Especially in cases where we opt for costly air shipments to avoid an interruption in treatment --and in such case a delay of weeks (the seizures caused delays of months) is almost by definition putting lives at stake.

What is bothering IDA, is that the conflicting effects of EU regulation 1383, anti MEDI-FAKE actions and free access to generic medicines under TRIPS have been observed at the end of 2008 and received broad media and political attention since January 2009. Both politicians and law makers know the effects on patients’ lives and we all seem to agree that this is wrong and should be changed.

Nevertheless, nothing in the last 10 months has officially changed. The statements made earlier this year in which the EU commission explained it was a Dutch problem proved wrong with the seizures that took place in Frankfurt and Paris in April and May.

We believe EU lawmakers should demonstrate with actions, not political statements or (defensive) explanations, that they seriously support access and affordability of essential medicines.

We at IDA, can develop contingency plans with transit airports outside of the EU, however it is not a real option as this may either increase cost or involve other time consuming delays. In this respect time is money and money is life.

We are happy to see that this workshop has attracted so much attention and that all parties concerned seem to agree on the principals of access to medicine and IPR law enforcement.

However, we urge the EU, with support of the national law enforcement bodies to demonstrate ownership and a genuine sense of urgency followed by action to ensure stakeholders that this problem is off the table.

Until this happens, we deplore that the WHO is not using its voice more prominently and not applying heavier pressure which would help a lot.

We thank MSF for this initiative allowing IDA to take the floor at this audience.

The audio link is available on the WTO website: http://www.wto.org/audio/forum09_session43.mp3