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India-UK FTA worries Doctors Without Borders

Shillong, Nov 2: The Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Wednesday said the free trade agreement between India and the UK could undermine India’s robust pro-public health safeguards, which could have a detrimental effect on the sustainable production, registration and supply of affordable, quality-assured generic medicines from India, upon which millions of people around the world rely.

Negotiations between the UK and India on a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) were formally launched in January 2022 and are currently accelerating, with high-level meetings between the two governments scheduled this November on the side-lines of the G20 Summit in Indonesia. The demands of the UK in the intellectual property (IP) chapter of the FTA contain harmful IP provisions, as leaked by bilaterals.org.

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MSF called on the UK and Indian governments to remove these proposals, including such TRIPS-plus provisions from the UK-India FTA negotiation.

“Given the disastrous consequences this leaked IP chapter could have on the global supply of generic medicines, the UK government should withdraw it completely. India should stay vigilant and not allow barriers to affordable medicines to be written into FTA negotiations,” says Leena Menghaney, South Asia Head, MSF’s Access Campaign.

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