VANCOUVER—A recent poll suggests Canadians care deeply about making affordable medicines available to the sick and ailing in developing countries. But carrying that out has been easier said than done, despite a bill passed in 2004 that received all-party support.
The Jean Chrétien Pledge to Africa Act was intended to facilitate exports of lower-priced, generic medicines to treat diseases such as AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in developing countries.
But in the five years since it passed, only one country—Rwanda—has received just one shipment of generic medicine.
Now, two pieces of legislation, one before the House and one in the Senate, aim to reform Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR) in order to cut down on red tape and put a simpler process in place.
Under the Pledge to Africa Act, generic drug companies have to apply for a new licence for each order for each country, making the process slow and unwieldy, explains Richard Elliott, executive director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.
He says that by the time the legislation was passed, it had become “compromised and watered-down and gummed-up as a result of the lobbying of the brand-name pharmaceutical industry.”
