[A2M] | Global talk | COVID-19 Highlights Unworkability and Unsustainability of Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR): An Analysis
Monday, October 25th | 17:00 (UTC-5)
Dr. Muhammad Zaheer Abbas
Faculty of Business and Law
Queensland University of Technology
Australia
The TRIPS Agreement required patent protection for inventions in all fields of technology including pharmaceuticals. North and South have been in a continuous negotiation over access to health technologies ever since coming into effect of the TRIPS Agreement. The Doha Declaration 2001 was a rare negotiation win for South. Article 31bis, the first amendment to TRIPS Agreement, which entered into force in January 2017, aimed at giving effect to Doha Declaration’s Paragraph 6 flexibility. The Article 31bis mechanism is crucial for least-developed countries and many developing countries that lack sufficient drug/vaccine manufacturing capacity of their own and rely upon imports from major generic drug manufacturing countries.
In 2005, Canada became the first country to amend its patent laws to provide for Canda’s Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR) – the export-oriented compulsory licensing mechanism as envisioned under Paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration and Article 31bis of the TRIPS Agreement. This presentation endeavours to critically evaluate the effectiveness of CAMR in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This presentation analyses workability and sustainability of CAMR with a special focus on Bolivia-Biolyse case study. Biolyse Pharma – a Canadian company having the potential to produce up to 20 million COVID vaccine doses per year – is eager to help countries lacking vaccine manufacturing capacity of their own. Since March 2021, Biolyse has been trying to use CAMR without much success. In May 2021, Biolyse signed an agreement with the government of Bolivia to provide COVID vaccines subject to grant of compulsory licenses as required under the Article 31bis mechanism. It will be an important case study to evaluate the effectiveness of CAMR – which was especially designed for helping poorer countries out of humanitarian considerations but it has been subjected to criticism for its impracticality and cumbersome procedural requirements. This presentation will also propose changes for simplifying CAMR and making it more acceptable to stakeholders.