The recently signed trade agreement between India and the United Kingdom will have detrimental effects on access to medicines in India, the Working Group on Access to Medicines and Treatments warned last week. By agreeing to concessions on transparency, compulsory licensing, and the patent system, Indian authorities risk undermining hard-fought public health safeguards in national legislation, including the Indian Patents Act, experts stated during a press conference organized by the group.

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K.M. Gopakumar, co-convener of the Working Group, noted that while public discourse around the free trade agreement (FTA) has focused on the prospect of cheaper whiskey in India, there has been significantly less attention paid to its impact on accessibility of medicines. According to Gopakumar, by weakening safeguards against patent evergreening and privileging voluntary licensing over compulsory licensing, among other things, the FTA effectively introduces TRIPS+ provisions through the back door.

“It [the FTA] clearly places the voluntary mechanism such as voluntary license as the preferred and optimal route to promote access to medicines,” the working group said. Voluntary licensing allows pharmaceutical companies to grant selected producers the right to manufacture patented medicines on terms they define. As these terms are set in a way to protect the company’s profit line, the practice does not benefit people in need of the treatment. In contrast, compulsory licensing allows governments to authorize generic production without the consent of the company holding the patent, increasing the chances of production in the interest of public health.

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Gopakumar, international trade expert Prof. Biswajit Dhar, and access to medicines advocate Roshan Joseph agreed that this shift toward voluntary licensing will have a chilling effect on potential compulsory license applicants, as it signals that Indian authorities do not see such measures as viable. “This explicit preference on voluntary licenses leaves the access to medicines in the hands of market forces and undermines the role of the government in facilitating availability of affordable medicines for the people,” Prof. Dhar stated. “It also gives a clear signal to the potential compulsory license applicant that they are not welcome.”

The India-UK FTA’s provisions, Prof. Dhar added, “do not bode well for patients and accessibility of medicines.” This is not the first time India has diluted existing public health protections. Last year, the country signed a trade agreement with four European countries that also watered down such safeguards, aligning Indian policy more closely with the demands of high-income countries and multinational pharmaceutical corporations. “There is a progressive movement towards accepting the demands of developed countries, which systematically remove the public interest safeguards available in the Indian Patents Act,” the working group wrote.

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The FTA’s provisions extend beyond licensing preferences: they also reduce transparency requirements. Under current conditions, patent holders must submit annual status reports, but the new agreement allows for reporting every three years. “This effectively compromises the ability of potential compulsory license applicants to prove unmet demands, which constitute a ground for compulsory license,” said Jyotsna Singh, co-convenor of the Working Group. “It clearly tilts the balance heavily in favor of the pharmaceutical transnational corporations.”

The intellectual property section also risks eroding protections against patent evergreening by pushing for harmonization, which could undermine India’s ability to evaluate and regulate patents independently. “Currently, India has provisions which don’t allow evergreening, i.e. granting patents on a little tweak of the existing medicine,” Gopakumar said. “Harmonization will push India to do so.”

The working group called for timely and organized resistance to the trends embodied in the India-UK FTA. Roshan Joseph emphasized that as more of these provisions are introduced through trade deals and other bilateral agreements, it will become increasingly difficult to roll them back. “The implementation of these provisions reduces the ability of the central and state governments to fulfill their constitutional obligation on right to health,” the Working Group concluded.

People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch*. For more articles and subscriptions to People’s Health Dispatch, click* here.

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