Last week I heard a very interesting presentation about a pattern that is emerging in Europe around the seizure of generic medicines. According to Percy Makombe from the Economic Justice Network presenting a paper at the Symposium on Health For All in an Interconnected World at York University, its possible to draw parallels between recent drug seizures (17 in Holland in 2008 alone) in Europe and the havoc being wrought by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean.

Though the generic drug trade is legalized through the agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), there is some confusion about their legal status, says Makombe. There is a perception that generic drugs are pirated or counterfeit, while in actual fact international agreements create certain provisions related generic medicines.

Makombe cites the example of a recent seizure of a shipment of Amoxicillin in Germany because the shipment - destined for the Pacific Island of Vanuatu - was suspected of violating trademarks. It wasn’t until GlaxoSmithKlein, the former patent holder of the drug, verified that there was no conflict that the drugs were released. They had been held for four weeks.

But, as Makombe points out, this is by no means an isolated incident. Ron Labonte from the University of Ottawa goes further to state explicitly that it is “fairly clear that there is a deliberate block against generic medicines by the European Commission.”

Some of the issues:

• Seizures are allowed based on “suspicion” that they could be counterfeit rather than real legal issues.
• Slowing down the transit of essential medicines has real implications for public health in the destination countries.
• Seizures block the legitimate growth of the generic industry.
• The European argument is that they are “saving lives” by verifying that the drugs are not counterfeit or pirated.

For more info:

• European Commission Regulation 1383/2003 (22 July 2003)
• June 2009 TRIPS Council Meeting; more
• Additional media coverage; more

(photo credit: aussiegall)

opama .. and The pyramids and sphinx

Yesterday I went to a Global Health Discussion Forum, a “monthly forum for members of the healthcare and educational communities to learn more about international projects around Toronto.” This particular one highlighted the brand new Textbook on International Health: Global Health in a Dynamic World, written by Anne-Emanuelle Birn (a former professor of mine), Timothy Holtz and Yogan Pillay.

In the discussion, Birn focused on how the textbook is different from those that have come before it, emphasizing that it approaches the subject of international health from a critical political economic perspective.  In other words, the textbook not only provides information, but tries to situate that information in a broad context of global neoliberalism.  Written by a historian, epidemiologist and policy maker who all met at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health as students, it sounds like the book does a good job of looking at the issues from a variety of angles.

The authors divide the book up into three general sections:

Basic Tools (Chapters 1-6)

• including history, actors, the political economy of health and development, data on health, and epidemiological profiles of health and disease

Key Lenses and Priority Areas (Chapters 7-12)

• including social determinants of health, health under crisis, globalization/trade/work/health, health economics, health care systems, and health & environment

Change through Action (Chapter 13-14)

• including a “hopeful realist approach” to where do we go from here, and an appendix of organizations that work on global health issues

Unfortunately, they sold out all their copies of the book before I could get a hold of one, so I’ll have to wait until it arrives from Amazon.

(photo credit: Diego Cupolo)

The Globe and Mail recently ran an article called “Banned Aid” on the new funding approach to international development agencies in Canada. Canada has made recent changes to their funding approach restricting their major funding to 20 key countries essentially abandoning countries like Malawi, Rwanda, Niger among others (they still give some aid but it is a very small percentage of their former funding. When I was in university there was chatter among some of my professors that this was the way the Canadian Government was moving so I can’t say I was surprised. The article is clear in showing how the plan to restrict aid will be detrimental to countries like Malawi who remain poor but have seen some success from the Canadian Foreign Aid. Several reasons are given for the change including our recessed economy, political support and popularity for the “African Cause”.

We’ve often been skeptical of what Celebrity endorsement does to aid in terms of international economic sustainability. Optimistically, I sometimes cheered when I found out that a celebrity was taking the initiative to promote an organization but I also worried about what would happen if they lost interest. There has been a surge in popularity for African Aid in the last 20 years but, what have the actual results been? Not very successful if you look at the figures. We aren’t going to achieve our goals for the Millenium Development Goals. The 2010 deadline for the Group of 8’s promise to double their contribution to aid in Africa is looming and will fall short, having only raised $22 Billion of the $80 Billion dollar promise so far.

If you look only at the figures then the media attention that Africa has received from a host of celebrities and notorious politicos hasn’t really done the continent much good. Recently Ben Affleck and The Rolling Stones have jumped on a new bandwagon with the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHCR) to create a short film directed by Affleck to the tune of “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones. The ad campaign/documentary has been created as a part of the Gimme Shelter campaign hoping to raise funds and awareness help raise funds and awareness about the crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Affleck is quoted as saying that “we made this film in order to focus attention on the humanitarian crisis in the DRC at a time when too much of the world is indifferent or looking the other way”. You don’t have to look very hard to find a book, film or documentary that is trying to spread awareness on the humanitarian crisis in any number of African countries. But if I learned anything from Renzo Martens it’s that our awareness of the plight of many impoverished Africans isn’t really helping them anyways.

If you look at how funding is spread across Africa there is disparity between countries. Canada’s explanation for this are key words like “effectiveness” and “established need”. It’s not a strategy that is unique to Canadians, the idea that aid should go to countries only if they are economically and politically stable enough to use the money effectively is a fundamental key to many global financing programmes including the World Bank. There have been good and bad examples of this.

In some countries foreign aid is making a significant improvement to living standards. The United Nations’ Millennium Villages Project is described as approaching development by empowering impoverished villages to transform themselves by investing in infrastructure and the basic needs like food, health, education and access to clean water for community led interventions and has had marked success in Uganda. The flagship project in Uganda was initiated by Jeffrey Sachs who has the idea that the Millenium Development Goals can be achieved on a modest budget, hoping to defy those failed promises from the G-8.

The Globe and Mail Article highlights several critics of International Development Aid who have put out new books recently. So, should we scrap aid programs and find new solutions? Or do we still have a responsibility as rich nations to help bridge the gap. I am still of the mind that we have a responsibility to fund aid programs but there must be a more realistic and effective way. On June 1st The Munk Debate on Foreign Aid focused on whether aid was doing more harm than good. Representing the No side was Stephen Lewis, former United Nations special envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa, and Paul Collier, director of Oxford University’s Centre for the Study of African Economies. For the Yes was Dambisa Moyo, a young economist who was born and raised in Zambia and Hernando de Soto, a Peruvian economist.

(The debate starts at 44.45)

A conversation has begun and hopefully we can continue to find better solutions to the aid conundrum and I can’t wait to see what Dambisa Moyo and Hernando de Soto had to say while pitted against Stephen Lewis and Paul Collier!

On May 31^st, a team of Toronto’s social media geniuses will be participating in the World Partnership Walk-A Social Movement to raise money for the fight against global poverty.  Check out Ms. RedWire and the Dynamic Duo, Mr. Daily Challenge, Super Blogger, and others.  Or to see who’s winning the race to raise the most, visit the HeroMeter.

 

About the Charity:

Before Hot Docs came to an end last week, I was able to squeeze in one final film about global issues.  This one featured a Dutch artist travelling to the Democratic Republic of Congo and trying to convince impoverished people that they should, as the name of the film suggests, Enjoy Poverty.  Martens’ main point is that we are profiting from others’ (in this case, Congolese) poverty and that those in poverty should try to reclaim ownership over it and start to exploit it as a natural resource.

The controversial film has been reviewed all over the internet, but I thought I’d share my thoughts as well.  As you watch this movie, there are moments when you cringe at the upfront and sometimes exploitative way the director, Renzo Martens, interacts with the film’s subjects.  But after watching several films in a row, Marten’s style is also refreshingly different from the other docs dealing with development issues in this year’s festival.

He interacts with each of the subjects as a human first and a victim of structural violence second.  In my last post, I talked about how each of the three films I saw before this one focused on some international hero, rather than a particular cause itself.  In doing so, the people that the heroes were trying to help tended to come across as objects, rather than active subjects in the film’s plot line.   In Enjoy Poverty, Martens films himself in a purposefully narcisitic way, which somehow made his interactions with people less glossy, and certainly less heroic.  In the question and answer period after the show, he explained that he wanted to be in the film himself, as an exploiter, because to try and remain neutral in telling this story is to deny the role of the West in creating poverty.

Obviously, not every person should be as exploitative as Martens, but I think his vision and his voice is VERY important because it challenges the “solution” as well as bringing attention to the problem of extreme poverty.  During the debate after the screening, one development worker piped up, “You’ve done a very good job of highlighting the problems of poverty and the NGOs working in the Congo, but very little to offer constructive solutions.”

Martens didn’t hesitate: “No, I think I was very clear about the solution.  We have to be willing to pay a fair price for what we’re getting from places like the Congo.”  Plain and simple.

If you haven’t already, watch this movie.