By Laura MacInnis GENEVA, July 20 (Reuters) - Rwanda plans to import a generic HIV/AIDS medicine made in Canada, making it the first country to test a World Trade Organisation waiver on drug patents, the WTO said on Friday. In a filing to the global trade arbiter, Rwanda said it intended to import 260,000 packs of TriAvir, a fixed-dose antiretroviral drug made by Apotex Inc., a Toronto-based generic drugmaker, over the next two years. The central African nation invoked a never-before-used August 2003 waiver to WTO's intellectual property rules, meant to allow poor countries with public health problems to import generics when they cannot manufacture the drugs themselves. Development campaigners such as Oxfam have criticised "the paragraph 6 solution," as the waiver is often called, as being too burdensome because of its hefty reporting rules and because it requires would-be exporters to negotiate with drug patent holders for the right to sell generics abroad. Normally, countries can only issue such compulsory licenses that allow the production of cheaper generics when the medicines are to be distributed domestically, as occurs in India. The WTO's 150 member states have until December to ratify a decision to make the waiver a permanent amendment of the TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement, but until the Rwandan move, no country had used it. European Union lawmakers this week delayed endorsing the mechanism, saying it was too cumbersome and restrictive to deal with poor nations' problems accessing drugs to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases that kill millions every year. Pascale Boulet, a legal advisor for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and its Access to Essential Medicines Campaign, said developing countries have been reticent to use the "paragraph 6" system because of its difficult procedures. Boulet said the aid group would follow the Rwandan case with great interest to see if the medicine it wants from Apotex does reach the country, where about 3 percent of the population is infected with HIV/AIDS. "It is important to keep in mind that this is just one shipment of one product for Rwanda," she said, stressing the WTO mechanism had a very limited scope. "It is a system that works on a country-by-country and case-by-case basis. It may indeed respond to the needs of Rwanda for this specific medicine but this is not a solution to the broader problem."
