On September 11th, an amendment to the Agreements on Intellectual Property Rights Aspects Related to Trade (TRIPS), approved by the member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO), was introduced to the Congress, which would allow poor countries that cannot manufacture their own generic medications to import them instead.
On January 23rd, the General Director of the WTO, Roberto Azevêdo, announced the entry into effect of the amendment to the TRIPS agreement, after two thirds of the group’s members signed an agreement that took more than a decade to finalize.
The amendment modifies the WTO’s TRIPS agreement, in effect since 1995, making what was once a temporary exception into something permanent and definitive and allowing poor countries that cannot manufacture their own generic medications to import them instead.
The original TRIPS agreement allowed governments in poor and developing countries to produce generic pharmaceuticals intended for their local markets without the consent of the patent holders. But that meant that poorer countries without production capacity were unable to access these medications given that the legislation did not provide for generic medications to be imported.
In 2003, the members of the WTO agreed to give these countries a temporary exemption, which could then be renewed every two years. In 2005, the countries agreed to make that authorization permanent, pursuant to an agreement by two-thirds of the 164 states that comprise the WTO.