On May 22nd CEHURD and the coalition to end maternal mortality marched to the constitutional court to hand over a complaint to the registrar over the delayed ruling on the maternal health petition, petition No.16 of 2011. The registrar apologized for the delay
in delivering the ruling and promised to deliver the same within 14 days
This booklet introduces our key partners, the journalists who
are not familiar with the field of intellectual property, to the
key issues in the ongoing commercial law reform process in
Uganda and the region as they relate to human rights.
Intellectual property being a broad, technical and dynamic
area, this booklet only offers an introduction to key concepts
and issues. We encourage journalists to use it for quick
reference and supplement it by reading more broadly and
following events as they unfold.
The Center for Health, Human Rights and Development (CEHURD) invites journalists
in Uganda to participate in its intellectual property and human rights capacity building
program for journalists. Journalists who are already part of this program and others
interested in joining at this stage should submit a concept for a story idea they would
wish to investigate. Story ideas should be related to the ongoing reforms in intellectual
property laws in Uganda and the East African region and their implications for public
health, education and agriculture.
Background
Uganda and the rest of East Africa (including the East African Community) are undergoing a commercial law reform process, with new laws being enacted and others at different stages of being enacted. These reforms aim to promote technological innovation and progress. However, each of these laws and draft laws, in their present form, also has a human rights dimension as far as access to educational materials, essential medicines, and food security are concerned.
The media capacity building program is part of CEHURD’s advocacy for a fair balance between the rights of holders of intellectual property rights (inventors, creators, authors, etc) and the interests of the wider society that consumes goods and services. The overall objective is to build competence in the mainstream media in Uganda to understand, appreciate and competently report issues of intellectual property and human rights.
Objective of this call
This process will gather well-investigated and balanced stories that illustrate the opportunities and challenges Uganda and the region face in enacting intellectual property that appropriately serve the development needs of the country/region. The objective is to highlight the role the media is playing in shaping the public debate and perceptions around intellectual property reform process.
A selection of the submitted stories will be, rewarded, published and shared amongst development partners and stakeholders as good practices.
Focus of story ideas
Eligible ideas will be related to any of the following legislations/bills:
• Industrial Properties Bill (2009)
• Plant Variety Protection Bill
• Trade Secrets Bill
• Geographical Indications Bill
• Competition Bill (2004)
• Anti-Counterfeit Goods Bill (2010)
• EAC Anti- Counterfeit Bill and draft policy
Story ideas should focus on the implications of these laws and draft laws for access to medicines; access
to food and food security; and access to educational materials.
Examples of issues to consider:
Eligibility
This call is restricted to journalists in main stream media and particular priority will be given to those who are actively participating in the mentoring program at CEHURD.
Submission
Interested candidates should send a one-page concept, briefly stating what the proposed story is about, pending questions to be answered by the fieldwork, proposed sources of information, a work plan and modest budget.
Available support
Journalists with creative ideas will be facilitated with financial and technical support to investigate them and compile articles. CEHURD will meet expenses for travel, meals, communication, stationery and consumables, out-pocket-expenses and meet other costs directly related to the process of investigation.
CEHURD will constitute an independent panel to evaluate the final submissions. The best articles will be rewarded as follows:
• Ushs 1,000,000 for the overall winner
• Ushs 250,000 for winner in the category of print
• Ushs 250,000 for winner in the category of Audio/radio
• Ushs 250,000 for winner in the category of video/television
NOTE: The articles don’t have to be published or broadcast for them to win a prize.
By Gale Courey Toensing
Dozens of Indigenous Peoples showed up at a presentation by the World Intellectual Property Organization at the 11th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues wearing t-shirts that said “World Intellectual Piracy Organization.”
The t-shirts were meant to educate Indigenous Peoples about the threats that the World Intellectual Property Organization poses to Indigenous Peoples’ genetic resources, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions. “It was very important to have a visual representation of what the work of WIPO actually is,” said Debra Harry (Paiute from Pyramid Lake in Nevada), who presented an intervention on behalf of more than a dozen indigenous organizations during WIPO’s presentation at the U.N. on May 10.
WIPO is a specialized body within the United Nations comprised of almost all of its nation-state members. It is “dedicated to the use of intellectual property (patents, copyright, trademarks, designs, etc.) as a means of stimulating innovation and creativity,” according to the WIPO website. WIPO services global registration systems for trademarks, industrial designs and appellations of origin, and a global filing system for patents, the site says. “Most industrialized nations have intellectual property protection systems that are centuries old. Many new and developing countries, however, are in the process of building up their patent, trademark and copyright legal frameworks and systems. With the increasing globalization of trade and rapid changes in technological innovation, WIPO plays a key role in helping these new systems to evolve through treaty negotiation, registration, enforcement, legal and technical assistance and training in various forms,” according to the website.
According to Harry and other indigenous delegates attending the UNPFII, WIPO is in the business of misappropriating indigenous knowledge, resources and aspects of traditional culture and expressions in order to commercialize and profit from them.
“There are many Indigenous Peoples’ in North America who have had a lot of their cultural traditional knowledge misappropriated. We’ve heard many stories of researchers who have come and done linguistics around Indigenous Peoples’ language and documented their oral histories and so on, and then have copyrighted that material and then the community no longer has access to that material. That’s an example of how intellectual property rights can be used to misappropriate Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge,” Harry said. Another example is the misappropriated and degradation of the Anishinaabeg’s traditional natural wild rice in Minnesota that benefits General Mills and General food.
Once the copyright protection or a patent expires, the material goes into the public domain, meaning it is available for free to anyone. “So if WIPO is successful in forcing indigenous knowledge systems into an intellectual property framework and certain aspects of our cultural heritage are usurped into that regime, it’s technically a one-way track out of our communities and out of our control and then put into the public domain. And the only reason you would do that is to commercialize it,” Harry said.
The WIPO representative at the UNPFII clearly indicated that WIPO is not interested in the protection of indigenous knowledge systems, Harry said. “In fact he said that ‘if you’re interested in protections and conservation of traditional knowledge, then WIPO is not for you.’ He actually said that. What he didn’t say conversely, then, is ‘If you’re interested in exploiting and commercializing indigenous knowledge systems, then WIPO is for you.”
Indigenous Peoples and organizations withdrew from active participation in WIPO in February. The organization meets two or three times a year in Geneva. The member states have consistently ignored the indigenous organizations’ demand over the past three or four meeting for full and equal participation in the process or to respect their rights and interests in the process, Harry said. “All our text proposals have fallen off the negotiation table and our rights to participate continue to be diminished, for instance, the amount of money available to support Indigenous Peoples to participate has continued to shrink dramatically so when it shrinks and they’re only able to support five Indigenous People from around the world to attend, that’s hardly fair representation of the worlds’ [370 million] Indigenous Peoples,” Harry said.
In her presentation at the UNPFII, Harry asked the WIPO pointblank, “[u]nder what moral and legal authority do you presume to possess a right to impose an intellectual property rights regime upon Indigenous Peoples and Nations knowledge and resources?” The WIPO representative’s answer was not recorded.
The Global Indigenous Youth Caucus (GIYC) also made a presentation during the session. “WIPO is a contemporary monopolistic manifestation of piracy that magnifies the Doctrine of Discovery and domination. We take on the responsibilities of our ancestors’ legacy at this critical moment in history [and] call for the extinguishment of WIPO’s mandate,” the representative said.
The GIYC statement echoed the call from the organizations that endorsed Harry’s intervention that includes:
Asking the Permanent Forum to request that WIPO amend its rules of procedure to insure the full and equal participation of Indigenous Peoples in all processes affecting them and that if WIPO does not change its rules it will be in violation of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Recommending that the UNPFII make it clear that WIPO has no authority to regulate Indigenous Peoples’ traditional knowledge or to access traditional knowledge and genetic resources, which remain under the control of Indigenous Peoples.
Calling on Indigenous Peoples to stand in solidarity in opposition to the Doctrine of Discovery and withdraw from the WIPO process until it changes its rules.
Recommending that Indigenous Peoples and nations set their own legal standards for the protection of genetic resources, traditional knowledge and cultural expressions.
“We have to continue to fight this whole process by any means,” Harry said. We have to call on states to let them know that Indigenous Peoples do not agree with what they’re doing and we need to see if we can get the mandate withdrawn from WIPO. These are matters that affect indigenous rights and WIPO is not an indigenous rights or human rights body. Their mandate is to promoted intellectual property rights; their income is derived from licenses. It’s purely an economic body.”
Analysis by Paul Abusharizi
Nalongo’s son had just undergone an operation and it was long past the time he was supposed to get his final pain killer for the day. She looked on helplessly as he whimpered in pain as his father went in search of the doctor on duty.
The nurse on duty, when she came around three hours after the 6:00pm prescribed time for the young man’s doze, claimed the drugs were not in stock and that they should go outside the hospital to buy the drugs, which prescription she hastily scribbled on a piece of paper.
As it turns out the drug was very much in stock. For those in the know this was a subtle attempt by the nurse to extract some money from the parents of the in-pain boy.
All this happened at the national referral hospital — Mulago. While the end user is under the impression that our health centres are suffering a perennial drug shortage, National Medical Stores is sitting on tons of drugs which are reportedly in short supply.
“My warehouses are full of drugs to the point that I am asking my suppliers to hold with future deliveries as I try to work these ones out of the system,” NMS boss Moses Kamabare told Sunday Vision.
Clearly, between NMS warehouses and the end users, there is a bottle neck that is preventing the end users from accessing lifesaving drugs.
Three years ago in an attempt to alleviate the perennial drug shortages in public facilities, government centralised the procurement process under NMS.
Previously, the procurement of drugs was decentralised to the national referral hospitals ‑Mulago and Butabika, the regional referral hospitals and the districts, which supplied the health center II to IV.
By centralizing drug procurement government hoped to take advantage of the discounts possible with the ensuing economies of scale, create uniformity of supply and curb drug thefts.
Under the current system the referral hospitals and the districts provide NMS with a procurement plan, which guides NMS as to the drugs and their quantities to buy for the year as well as how regularly they should be disbursed. NMS only procures according to these plans.NMS has a delivery schedule which is monthly for Mulago and Butabika and once every two months for everybody else.
Since the capacity to quantify needs was lacking at the lower health centres the health ministry came up with a basic kit, which has most of the essential drugs and supplies like gloves, which are supplied to the health centres two and three.
So NMS clients are supposed to requisition their drugs according to their pre-determined procurement plans and only then will they be supplied with the drugs.
“That is where the problem starts. We quickly found out that either they do not requisition, so we don’t dispatch or they requisition less than they already planned for leaving us with unused stock,” Kamabare said.
That is where the discrepancy between shortages at the health centres against the contradiction of NMS’ full warehouses begins.
By not requisitioning or under requisitioning you have health centres without drugs for months or running out of supplies ahead if schedule respectively.
Why this happens is a mixed bag of motives that range from incomprehensible incompetence to sabotage of an innovation that would expose the old practitioners to individual abuse of the system to meet personal needs.
“For example some prescribers can prescribe medicines that are not on our national essential medicines list. The idea being the patient would have to go out of the hospital to order the drugs living the impression that the hospital is short on drugs while the truth is that a perfectly adequate drug is readily available in the health facility’s dispensary,” Kamabare said.
Clearly a holistic solution to the problem including increasing health workers pay and welfare and training many more health workers is required.
But as a start beyond the streamlining procurement Kamabare counsels the use of medicines only listed in the national Essential Medicines List and prescribe as stipulated in the Uganda Clinical Guidelines – which has detailed descriptions of common ailments in the country and how they should be prescribed for.
“Artificial scarcities are being created and sustained contrary to the truth, “ the NMS boss says. “Among the drugs we are over laden with are those for cancer, TB, ARVs, family planning supplies, rabies vaccines, insulin and mama kits.
My concern is not that my warehouses are full but what is happening to the rightful patients of these drugs …. Aren’t they dying because of a failure of our systems?”
https://www.cehurd.org/2012/05/do-we-really-h…-drug-shortage
