GENEVA - The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Wednesday voiced concern over a new law in India banning the copying of patented medicines which the UN body fears could hit the provision of cheaper generic drugs to poor countries.
"It has worried us for a while. We have followed the debate very closely," the WHO's deputy director for the department of essential medicines German Velasquez told AFP.
He said the Geneva-based UN health body had recently written to the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the subject.
"We recalled the importance of the manufacture in India of generic medicines affects many developing countries," he added.
And he said they had insisted that "the country uses to the maximum the flexibility offered" by an August 2003 agreement by members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) dealing with the export of generic medicines to poor countries hit by health epidemics such as AIDS.
The Indian parliament's upper house on Wednesday approved a controversial drug patents bill, which critics warn could deprive millions of poor people of low-cost, life-saving drugs.
The approval paves the way for the bill, which prohibits domestic firms from copying low-cost generic versions of patented drugs, to become law.
The Indian law aims to bring the country into conformity with the WTO accord.
03/23/2005 15:39 GMT