Here's a quick look at how the latest WTO draft agreement affects health.
Services. While the agreement doesn't seem to roll back liberalisation in services, neither does it do much to push it forward - particularly with regards to LDCs.
I've already written about the huge benefits that LDCs could gain if they were to open up to genuine competition in services, so it's a shame the text is not more explicit. Moreover, the lack of positive movement on this issue is a depressing testament to the effectiveness of the ideological scaremongering undertaken by the NGOs.
Tariffs on drugs. I didn't see anything on this in the draft text. Admittedly, I only got to look at it for a few minutes before Julian swiped it (he's commenting live on CNN right about now)!
TRIPS and public health. This was done and dusted before the negotiators got together in Hong Kong this week, and is now effectively a dead issue. This closure renders many of the activist campaigns that were set up to campaign against TRIPS null and void.
Is that why members of MSF's Access to Medicines campaign have been running around Hong Kong all week trying desperately, but unsuccessfully, to resurrect the issue? Hopefully we will be hearing a lot less from them in future.
I'll post more when I've given the text a closer inspection.
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