International Health Community Rejects TPP Revival in Open Letter to Trade Ministers meeting in Hanoi
Prominent public health, advocacy and professional organisations have called on trade ministers from eleven remaining
Trans-Pacific Partnership countries not to attempt to resurrect the deal at their meeting in Hanoi tomorrow.
The open letter (attached) is signed by the World Federation of Public Health Organisations and leading health
organisations from most of the non-US participating countries - including from Australia, New Zealand and Japan, whose
governments are leading moves to revive the agreement since the U.S. withdrawal.
The signatories reiterated concerns they and others had previously raised regarding the negative impacts of the
Agreement on people’s right to health, access to affordable medicines, and the ability of governments to regulate
health-damaging activities of corporations.
Many of these provisions were included at the insistence of the U.S., which is no longer party, notably the
unprecedented monopoly protections for biologic medicines.
To address their concerns many parts of the text signed on 4 February 2016 would have to be rewritten from first
principles.
Quotes
"The provisions for biologic medicines included in the TPP at the behest of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry would
reduce access to treatments for cancer and other serious health conditions in the Asia-Pacific Region" said Dr Deborah
Gleeson, spokesperson for the Public Health Association of Australia. "Now that the U.S. has withdrawn, the opportunity
to remove these harmful and unnecessary rules should not be missed."
New Zealand Public Health Association President Louise Delany urged the parties ‘to ensure that health, social and
environmental objectives are central to any new agreement, so that trade rules are consistent with and help give effect
to the globally agreed Sustainable Development Goals’.
‘We are shocked that the TPPA, which raised grave health and human rights concerns, remains on the agenda of 11 of the
original negotiating countries, even after the US has pulled out of it. APN+ members are in 6 of these countries -
Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Japan - and will be among the first to face the consequences of
this disastrous trade agreement on their health and lives’
‘The TPPA was another life sentence hanging over people with HIV and AIDS. We thought that was lifted when the US pulled
out. Now some of them they want to go ahead. Listen to us. Choose life over the TPPA said Edward Low, Director of
Positive Malaysian Treatment Access & Advocacy Group (MTAAG+)’.
We now know that the TPPA text gives stronger and greatly expanded intellectual property rights over medicines to the
multinational pharmaceutical industry that will adversely impact the lives and health of millions of patients in the
Asia-Pacific. It must be rejected - once and for all.’