The Jean Chrétien Pledge to Africa Act (in full: An Act to amend the Patent Act and the Food and Drugs Act), a key piece of legislation implementing Canada's Access to Medicines Regime, was a bill introduced as C-9 in the third session of the 37th Canadian Parliament. It represented the first implementation of the TRIPS flexibilities declared in the August 30, 2003, General Council decision. Enacted in May 2004, it allows Canada to enact compulsory licenses to export essential medicines to countries without the capacity to manufacture their own. Other countries that have since enacted similar legislation include Norway and India.
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The purpose of the Act is to improve access to drugs for developing countries that can't manufacture the drugs or afford to buy them.[1] The drugs that fight these diseases are expensive to create and manufacture and thus are usually unaffordable for those who need them the most.[2]
The Pledge to Africa Act allows for the patents on these drugs to be overridden when manufactures are producing generic versions of the drug to sell in third world countries.[1]
The act has come under some criticism.[3][4][5] It took a full year from the time the bill was introduced to the time that it came into effect. Since the act came into effect in 2005, only one drug has been manufactured and exported under the act.
The process for obtaining the exceptions to the patents for the drugs is expensive and has to be renewed every two years and makes the production of generic drugs not necessarily economically viable for companies.[3]
As well exporting to countries that are not part of the WTO TRIPS agreement is made more difficult by further restrictions.[3]