37. The representative of Hungary said that the scope of the solution should not be limited only to patented products that were related to the diseases mentioned explicitly in the Declaration. All products necessary to deal with a public health crisis should be part of the arrangement, including patented products and those that were produced through patented processes. He said that the solution should also be extended to active ingredients and diagnostic kits. Excluding developed countries from potential source countries would limit competition and have an obvious adverse impact on the price at which importing beneficiary countries could obtain the products required. The representative said that restricting the supplying countries to developing Members would not in itself be sufficient incentive for pharmaceutical companies to set up manufacturing units in such countries. In addition to the economic implications of limiting supplier countries, a strong political message would be sent out if developed countries were excluded from the scope of potential suppliers and his country did not want to be party to that message.
38. On the question of assessment of insufficient manufacturing capacity, he said that such examination could only be done on a case-by-case basis by each country. The dynamic nature of the pharmaceutical industry in terms of new drugs and technologies being created, as well as changing geographical patterns of production, should be part of such an assessment under any solution. Given these dynamics, it would not be practical to draw up a list of countries with insufficient manufacturing capacity, which would have to be constantly updated. Against this background, assessment should be made by each country with the help of an indicative set of objective criteria decided upon by the TRIPS Council. On the question of which WTO Members should benefit, he said that neither the World Bank criteria nor the membership of any particular international organization should limit the countries that could benefit from the paragraph 6 solution.
