Police issue terror alert

By Rosemary Mirondo The Citizen Correspondent Dar es Salaam. A move by the European Union (EU) and India over a free trade agreement (FTA) that will affect the production of generic drugs has raised a lot of concern in government.Officials of the Tanzania Commission for Aids (Tacaids) told The Citizen yesterday that they were planning meetings that will involve a number of ministries and check how the country would be affected by the deal.If effected, the EU-India pact will jeopardise the production of generic medicines, whose consequence would be adverse to millions of HIV patients, among other. The Tacaids director of policy, planning and research medical consultant, Dr Rapheal Kalinga, said they have already booked meetings with officials from at least three ministries to discuss the issue. He named the ministries as Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Health and Social Welfare as well as Industries, Commerce and Marketing. He said it was true that the pact would affect local efforts to ensure that many people with Aids were provided anti-retrovirals (ARVs) free of charge. “We expect to meet with the ministries anytime from today to discuss the issue which is critical to the lives of our people because most ARVs used in the country are generic and produced in India. The EU is presently negotiating an FTA with India. Among issues for discussion would be intellectual property rights (IPR), provisions that could seriously jeopardise the production of essential medicine, including ARVs. Some provisions of the EU-India Agreement seek to impose higher standards of intellectual property protection that would limit and, in some cases, completely bar India from producing generic ARVs and other medicine. The data exclusivity clause will ensure that owners of branded drugs gain ten more years in patent time in addition to the ten years guaranteed under the Trade Related Intellectual Property Right (TRIPS). Thus this would hurt current and future manufacturers of generic drugs. According to Dr Kalinga, the meetings would dwell on charting the way forward after a  dialogue with relevant authorities. However, he noted that the dialogue on the issue of  property rights has been in discussion for seven years now. Earlier, it was reported that nearly four million Aids patients currently under antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) in the region live in constant fear over the looming EU-India FTA. The coordinator of the Network of African People Living with HIV in the East African Region (NAP+ EAR), Mr Joe Muriuki, said the worry was real. This is because millions of Aids patients in the developing world depend on India for generic medicine at affordable costs, he said. Earlier in the week, the chief medical officer in the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Dr Deo Mtasiwa, told The Citizen that the matter would be reviewed by relevant ministries. These are better placed to explain the impending India-EU deal and its implications to Tanzania, he said. He mentioned the ministries as Industries, Trade and Marketing, Finance and Economic Affairs as well as Foreign and International Co-operation. “I am not aware of the FTA negotiations between India and EU, but we will have to make a follow-up so that we can find out its implications to our people,” said Dr Mtasiwa when reached by phone last evening. Available records show that 92 per cent of people living with HIV on treatment in low and middle-income countries currently use generic anti-retrovirals (ARVs), mostly manufactured in India. For example, Medicines Sans Frontieres (MSF) buys 80 per cent of its Aids medicine from Indian companies. About 90 per cent of Aids drugs provided to 13 countries by PEPFAR - the US President global Aids programme - are generics, the overwhelming majority of them also produced in India.The FTA by EU and India could result in a huge increase in the price of essential medicine and greater government expenditure on health. With regard to these concerns, MSF has written to the European Commissioner for Trade, Mr Karel de Gucht, urging him to ensure that access to ART combination pills - which the group says have “revolutionised” HIV treatment - is not curtailed under the FTA.