Decison on Drug Policy Pays Off (Page 54)

Story: Lucy Adoma Yeboah
THE decision by the Health Ministry to involve other stakeholders to work on the country’s drug policy has paid off, Mrs Martha Gyansa-Lutterodt, the Programme Manager of the National Drug Policy, has noted.
She said that collaboration had helped to put in place the right legislation which had received international recognition and also made Ghana compliant with the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO’s) instituted Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).
Mrs Gyansa-Lutterodt said this in an interview with the Daily Graphic after a debriefing session for a nine-member Zambian delegation which has been in Ghana for the past five days to learn about the country’s experience in incorporating the TRIPS agreement into local laws.
She said the institutions which collaborated with the Ministry of Health in getting the rights done were the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Ministry of Justice and Attorney-General, the Ministry of Trade, Industry, President’s Special Initiatives and Private Sector Development and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning.
The TRIPS agreement is the set standards for intellectual property protection in the world which came into force on January 1, 1995 and is binding on all member states of the WTO.
The agreement sets minimum standards in international rules governing patents, including those on medicines. These standards, among others, say that patents must be given for a minimum of 20 years, that patents may be given both for products and processes, and that pharmaceutical test data must be protected against ‘unfair commercial use’.
Speaking at the meeting, the leader of the Zambian delegation, who is also the Examiner at the Patents and Registration Office in Zambia, Mr Justin T. Chilambwe, said the scope of the team’s visit to Ghana had been fulfilled, since it had proved to be informative and educative.
He said the team realised the need to quickly institute a process to support TRIPS compliance, which included setting up an inclusive inter-ministerial committee, and gave the assurance that the process would begin as soon as the delegation got back home.
To fully understand the issues at stake, he said the team paid separate visits to the offices of the MOH, the National AIDS Control Programme, the Ghana AIDS Commission, the Ministry of Justice and Attorney-General’s Department, the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Food and Drugs Board.
Others were WHO offices in Accra, the United Nations Development Programmes offices in Accra and a private pharmaceutical company in Accra, LaGray.
Mr Chilambwe expressed appreciation, on behalf of the team and the Zambian government, to the Ghanaian authorities and especially the heads of the various institutions the team visited for the warm welcome accorded them.