The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement: Implications for Access to Medicines and Public Health – UNITAID

Final Report UNITAID March 2014
Through this analysis of provisions that are proposed in the context of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agree­ment negotiations, UNITAID seeks to better understand current and future issues in trade negotiations and their impact on access to medicines.
The proposed TPPA goes well beyond traditional trade concerns and includes, among other elements, extensive obligations related to intellectual property and investor protection. The intellectual property obligations proposed for the TPPA exceed the minimum standards of the multilateral World Trade Organi­zation (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).
In addition to TRIPS-plus intellectual property provisions being negotiated as part of the TPPA, there are also serious concerns that proposed provisions related to financing and/or reimbursement of medicines, as well as to investment, will have adverse implications for access to medicines and the protection of public health in general.
In light of these concerns, UNITAID commissioned this report to identify proposed TPPA provisions that are likely to have implications for public health and access to pharmaceutical products.  Read the report here