5. The representative of the World Health Organization said that he was hopeful that the TRIPS Council would find an expeditious solution by the end of this year to the problem of public health and access to medicines, as instructed by the Doha Ministerial Conference, for those other countries with no or insufficient manufacturing capacity in the pharmaceutical industry. The WHO was committed to helping the TRIPS Council in finding this solution. He drew the Members' attention to a paper published by the WHO on the implications of the Declaration. The paper described a solution to the so-called "paragraph 6 problem" desirable from a public health perspective. In his view, the salient features of this solution included the provision of a stable international legal framework, transparency and predictability of applicable rules, simple and speedy legal procedures in the exporting and importing countries, equality of opportunity for countries in need of medicines, including for products that were not patented in the importing countries, multiplicity of potential suppliers of the required medicines from both developed and developing countries and a broad coverage in terms of public health problems and medicines. He reminded Members that the basic public health principle being followed in the solution was that the people of a country that did not have the manufacturing capacity to produce a needed product should be no less protected by compulsory licences and other provisions and safeguards in the TRIPS Agreement, nor face greater procedural hurdles compared to the people of a country capable of producing the product. The solution, he said, that was most consistent with this principle was the provision of a limited exception under Article 30. Such an exception would, in his view, meet the mandate of the Declaration and provide expeditious authorization to third parties to make, sell, and export patented drugs and other technologies to meet public health needs.
