Letters and Petitions

Please find below the letters and petitions that Medsin have signed over the last few months. The Medsin network strongly believes the statements that have we have signed and a number of our campaigns are projects are working in areas related to these petitions.

For more information please contact Helen at president@medsin.org

1. Letter to Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement Negotiators

Dear [Negotiator],

We are writing to urge the negotiators of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement to agree to publish immediately the draft text of the agreement, as well as pre-draft discussion papers (especially for portions for which no draft text yet exists), before continuing further discussions over the treaty. We ask also that you publish the agenda for negotiating sessions and treaty-related meetings in advance of such meetings, and publish a list of participants in the negotiations.

There is no legitimate rationale to keep the treaty text secret, and manifold reasons for immediate publication.

The trade in products intended to deceive consumers as to who made them poses important but complicated public policy issues. An overbroad or poorly drafted international instrument on counterfeiting could have very harmful consequences. Based on news reports and published material from various business associations, we are deeply concerned about matters such as whether the treaty will:

  • Require Internet Service Providers to monitor all consumers' Internet communications, terminate their customers' Internet connections based on rights holders' repeat allegation of copyright infringement, and divulge the identity of alleged copyright infringers possibly without judicial process, threatening Internet users' due process and privacy rights; and potentially make ISPs liable for their end users' alleged infringing activity;

  • Interfere with fair use of copyrighted materials;

  • Criminalize peer-to-peer file sharing;

  • Interfere with legitimate parallel trade in goods, including the resale of brand-name pharmaceutical products;

  • Impose liability on manufacturers of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), if those APIs are used to make counterfeits -- a liability system that may make API manufacturers reluctant to sell to legal generic drug makers, and thereby significantly damage the functioning of the legal generic pharmaceutical industry;

  • Improperly criminalize acts not done for commercial purpose and with no public health consequences; and

  • Improperly divert public resources into enforcement of private rights.

Because the text of the treaty and relevant discussion documents remain secret, the public has no way of assessing whether and to what extent these and related concerns are merited.

Equally, because the treaty text and relevant discussion documents remain secret, treaty negotiators are denied the insights and perspectives that public interest organizations and individuals could offer. Public review of the texts and a meaningful ability to comment would, among other benefits, help prevent unanticipated pernicious problems arising from the treaty. Such unforeseen outcomes are not unlikely, given the complexity of the issues involved.

The lack of transparency in negotiations of an agreement that will affect the fundamental rights of citizens of the world is fundamentally undemocratic. It is made worse by the public perception that lobbyists from the music, film, software, video games, luxury goods and pharmaceutical industries have had ready access to the ACTA text and pre-text discussion documents through long-standing communication channels.

The G8's recent Declaration on the World Economy implored negotiators to include ACTA negotiations this year. The speed of the negotiations makes it imperative that relevant text and documents be made available to the citizens of the world immediately.

We look forward to your response, and to working with you toward resolution of our concerns.

Sincerely,

Medsin

2. Call-to-Action : Urge Roche to Supply Fuzeon for Patients

On July 3rd, Mr. Urs Flueckiger, President of Roche Korea said in a two-hour meeting with HIV activists and NGOs that the price for Fuzeon was "not negotiable". Fuzeon is an essential drug for HIV-positive people who have tried other anti-HIV drugs in the past and are unable to keep their viral loads undetectable using drugs that are currently available. The Korean Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs listed Fuzeon at a price of $18,000 a year in 2004. However the Swiss drug giant Roche claimed $ 22,000 and has withheld the supply of this life saving drug in South Korea.

A marketing director of Roche Korea said in the news interview that Roche has not supplied Fuzeon to developing countries including South Korea, because they have no ability to pay for the drug. That is to say, Fuzeon will not be supplied for the countries who do not have enough money to pay for. In the meeting, Mr. Urs said 'we do not do business for saving lives, but for making money. Saving lives is none of our business'.

Roche argues that the demand for $22,000 is not excessive one because South Korea has the National Healthcare Insurance System and is classified as a high-income country by the World Bank. However, it should be noted that the national healthcare system is currently under threat from multinational drug companies. Aggressive drug pricing policy by pharmaceutical companies is threatening not only developing countries but developed countries.

Most developed countries have national healthcare systems, but now they are shrinking due to the influence of multinational drug companies and FTAs. For instance, the Korea-U.S. FTA makes it very difficult to issue 'compulsory licensing' which enables people to control drugs and undermines people's access to medicines by introducing various measures to strengthen patent and intellectual property protections on medicines. In this way, the national healthcare system, even in the developed countries, is rapidly changing and the burden of expensive prices now affects the people.

Big pharmaceutical companies often argue that the problem of 'access to medicine' can be solved by charity to developing countries. However, the exact point is not 'access to medicines for the poor', but 'access to medicines for all'. In addition, it should be emphasized that the people's struggle to access 3rd line AIDS therapy is also very important. We believe that any patient has a right to access the most suitable and affordable medicines.

We believe that our struggle is your struggle and can be extended to the campaign against the aggressive drug pricing policy of big pharmaceutical companies across the world.

Therefore, we are calling upon you to send signatures to urge Roche to desist from jeopardizing the lives of HIV patients. If you would like to sign on, please send your organization's name or your name and city/state where you live or work to naengee@hotmail.com. The deadline for sign-on is September 11, 2008.

Thank you for your solidarity.

Korea HIV/AIDS Network of Solidarity Medsin UK

3. Call for involvement of civil society in the International Health Partnership

Dear Signatories of the International Health Partnership,

On behalf of UK, European and international civil society – many of whom are either active in the IHP focus countries or partner with local civil society organisations – Action for Global Health and the under-signed organisations would like to express our concerns regarding the involvement of civil society in the roll-out of the International Health Partnership.

The Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness commits donor and recipient governments to ensuring broad participation of a range of national and local actors in setting development priorities. The original concept note for the IHP and subsequent meetings with the UK's Department for International Development and the 'Health 8' agencies highlighted the importance of involving civil society in the roll out of the IHP. UK, European and international civil society however, is very disappointed that five months after the launch of the IHP we are yet to see a transparent and robust model of how civil society will be involved in the roll out of the IHP at national and international level.

We are aware that from 28th February – 1st March 2008, there will be a meeting of the country partners and international stakeholders of the IHP in Lusaka. As a first clear step to uphold the commitment to civil society participation in the IHP we expect clear representation at this meeting. While a little late in the day, we do welcome recent efforts to open up this meeting to a select number of civil society members. We also request however, that the role of civil society in the IHP be incorporated as an official agenda item for the meeting, including the presentation and discussion of models of best practice. We, as civil society members, can collectively agree on an appropriate and experienced presenter for this session.

Looking forward we urge all IHP stakeholders to urgently develop a clear framework for civil society engagement and representation at national and international level.

At national level, civil society must be brought to the table within each IHP partner country as soon as possible to enable their full participation in both the stocktaking exercise and the development of the country compact. Such participation must involve direct interaction between civil society representatives, donor groups and government.

At the international level we encourage the formalisation and facilitation of regular consultation meetings between civil society representatives and the IHP partners. In addition we advocate for direct representation of civil society in the 'Scaling up Reference Group'.

In order to ensure that civil society can play a fully active and meaningful role in the IHP at both national and international levels, there is a need to allocate specific financial and technical resources to support this.

We hope that the points made above will be taken into consideration for the Lusaka meeting and the ongoing developments of the IHP and look forward to continuing dialogue with you on this issue.

Signed

Medsin UK

4.Preconditioning Gold Sales on Reform of IMF Policy in Developing Countries

Dear Executive Director,

With many countries repaying their loans to the International Monetary Fund and not seeking new lines of credit, the institution’s traditional means of generating income is dwindling. Facing a budget shortfall of $400 million in 2010, in April the IMF’s Executive Board approved a proposal to sell some of its gold reserves. The revenue will be used to create an endowment whose earnings will assist in financing the institution’s administrative budget. We are writing to urge that before the Executive Board implements gold sales, it insist on meaningful pro-development reforms in IMF policy in developing countries, and attach conditions to how gold sales will occur.

Over the last three decades, IMF policies have limited development, and denied opportunity and decent livelihoods to hundreds of millions. The IMF has leveraged its role as gatekeeper to international capital flows to insist that poor countries adopt a narrow set of macroeconomic policies. These policies have limited possibilities for more expansionary economic growth and prevented developing country governments from investing sufficiently in healthcare, education and other vital needs.

As proposed, sale of IMF gold would be a one-time event, with the proceeds used solely to fund IMF operations, and without any assurances or even promises of changes to long-standing failed and harmful IMF policies.

If the IMF Executive Board is to proceed with gold sales, it should take advantage of the opportunity to remedy these historic wrongs. The proceeds from gold sales must not be used exclusively to maintain IMF staff.

The gold held by the IMF is in essence a global public good. If gold sales are to be implemented, a significant portion of the proceeds should be devoted to the public good of alleviating global poverty. The best way to do this would be to allocate proceeds towards debt cancellation. Proceeds could be placed into a trust that could be used to cover protracted arrears of countries soon to be eligible for debt cancellation under the existing IMF/World Bank debt relief programs, or to fund future debt cancellation for additional impoverished countries.

Gold sales should not be permitted before the IMF achieves the following specific and demonstrable changes in its policy mandates and prescriptions for developing countries:

• The IMF must rescind the use of overly restrictive deficit-reduction and inflation-reduction targets. These contractionary targets prevent developing countries from boosting their economic growth by expanding long-term public investments through deficit spending in key public sectors, such as the critical areas of health and education. The IMF must not continue to stand in the way of policy makers in borrowing countries exploring and adopting more expansionary fiscal and monetary policy options.

• Expanded health and education spending must be exempt from policies that unduly constrain overall government spending. Budget and wage bill ceilings have undermined impoverished countries’ ability to provide adequate salaries for health and education workers, hire additional needed health workers and teachers, and scale up and improve the quality of the health and education sectors. The IMF has made some progress toward eliminating wage bill ceilings, but it still maintains budget caps that limit overall government spending flexibility.

• Developing countries must be permitted to spend foreign aid for its intended purposes. Instead of being spent on health, HIV/AIDS, and education, large percentages of foreign aid have been allocated to domestic debt payment and international currency reserves because of IMF policies regulating monetary policies. While we understand that the establishment of strong reserves can be a priority for a country, the decision of whether to use foreign aid to build up reserves should be the government’s, made after public discussion of the implications with the legislature, civil society, and other stakeholders, with a clear analysis of the trade-offs involved.

• Debt cancellation must be de-linked from harmful economic policy conditions, including overly restrictive deficit-reduction and inflation-reduction targets, wage and budget caps that limit spending on health and education; and policies that lead to diversion of foreign aid from its intended purposes.

• Transparency and the right to access information must be strengthened at the IMF. Disclosure of IMF draft policy papers, technical assistance reports, and Executive Board documents—such as the minutes on Board meetings—is imperative to facilitating informed participation by external stakeholders in national economic decision-making and to ensuring citizens’ ability to hold their governments accountable.

• IMF practices must change to ensure national, democratic decision-making over policy-making. The operational process of IMF Mission Teams that visit countries to review loan agreements or conduct annual surveillance (Article IV reports) must facilitate open and informed consultations with a wide range of external stakeholders, not just with the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank. Stakeholders should include other relevant government ministries (including health and education), independent economists and academic specialists, national civil society and labor unions. These broad and meaningful consultations should occur before a country’s macroeconomic policies are set.

Finally, we note that the IMF’s gold sales plan indicates there will be no subsequent sale of gold. Given skyrocketing costs for food and oil and the current global financial turmoil, redressing developing country debt problems and meeting Millennium Development Goal (MDG) objectives may require new sources of funding in the future. There is no reason to preemptively commit to not deploying the global public good of IMF gold for this purpose in the future.

Sincerely,

Medsin UK

5. Bretton Woods Process to Reform the Global Economic System

Dear All >

As you may know, there is much discussion about a new "Bretton Woods" process to reform the global economic system. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get real changes - but only if we can ensure that the interests of the world population as a whole are fully represented and reflected in the process itself.

If they can get away with it, the developed country governments will make sure that they run the process, so that it will deal with their problems without threatening their interests (including their dominance of global governance). It is imperative that we do everything we can to stop them doing this, and ensure an inclusive process with a broad agenda, to allow developing countries to address their concerns.

Attached is a civil society statement calling for such a process - signed by 600+ organisations so far. (For the latest list, see www.choike.org/bw2 http://www.choike.org/bw2 .) It has already been sent to the G20 leaders, but is still open for signatories, and will be presented again ahead of the Washington summit on 15 November. Please do sign up, and forward to anyone and everyone who might!

Many thanks

6. IMF Review of Lending Instruments, Facilities, and Policies

Ministers of Finance

IMF Executive Directors

It is time to seriously re-think the role that the IMF should be playing in low-income countries. The Executive Board's plan to review all the Fund's lending instruments and facilities over the next few months presents an opportunity to do so.

The IMF has come under serious criticism both internally and externally about its focus and role in low income countries. The Malan Committee highlighted the inappropriate role the Fund is playing in low-income countries, overstepping its traditional role of addressing short term balance of payment crises to act as a development financier, even though it is not a development institution. The report concluded that "the Fund's financing in low-income countries is an area where it has moved beyond its core responsibilities."

The Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the IMF has highlighted problems with both the structural and macroeconomic conditions in PRGF countries. The IEO report released in January 2008 highlighted the lack of progress on reducing conditionality. Despite this, the first annual report on structural conditionality shows that it has increased rather than decreased. The 2007 IEO report demonstrated that PRGF programs largely replicate the conditions attached to the "structural adjustment" lending which has been so heavily criticized.

While the Fund may have a role to play in addressing short-term balance of payments problems, it is clearly not equipped to act as a long-term development lender in low-income countries. Conditionality included in PRGF programs constrains the domestic policy space needed by countries to develop innovative economic policies best suited to create growth and reduce poverty in their specific country contexts. It also undermines the accountability of borrowing governments, who blame IMF conditions for the lack of investment in their social sectors.

The IMF Board should take the necessary steps to insure that the planned review of the PRGF is rigorous and broad. We believe that any comprehensive examination is likely to echo past recommendations for a sharp curtailment or closure, given the IMF's lack of development expertise and apparent inability or disinclination to limit the use of conditionality. We call on you to close the PRGF to new requests. The funds remaining in the PRGF Trust should be shifted to other institutions and other forms of development assistance, implying no net decrease in resources available to low-income countries.

With new resources available to low-income countries from debt relief and scaled-up aid, now is the time to make sure that the international financial architecture meets the serious challenges faced by low-income countries.

That calls for new thinking about the IMF's role. The undersigned organisations (and individuals) urge you to use the IMF's facility review to do just that.

Signed

Medsin UK

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Last updated on Friday 26 December 2008 at 19:13.