To the Editor:
When is legislation "successful"? MP Randy Hoback's article "Message received on Parliament Hill" declared that the Canadian Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR) "is the only regime of its kind worldwide to have been used to successfully export lower-cost generic drugs to a developing country."
Does exporting to one country count as successful? Does exporting one drug count? Does splitting the one drug into two shipments count?
CAMR is critically ill. Voted in unanimously in 2004, it was heralded as keeping Canada's humanitarian promise to the international community. Hoback's article states CAMR reform would not "result in greater exports" because we are not a low cost generic producer. His article also mentions Apotex, the billion dollar Canadian generic drug company. It obtained the one CAMR license issued and would eagerly export more if, and only if, CAMR were streamlined (see the Apotex press release http://tinyurl.com/bsukqe2).
How many more exports would it take for "greater exports"? Even counting the two separate shipments of one drug to Rwanda as two exports, Apotex could easily double our appalling record.
The efforts to reform CAMR now outnumber the shipments by one. In Canada, we can count the hours lost in CAMR reform but how do we count the lives lost in developing countries; lives of children, sisters, brothers, mothers, and fathers? How did your MP vote (http://tinyurl.com/cflqk7u)?
Every life lost or health compromised for lack of access to affordable generic drugs needs to be imported into the conscience of every MP who killed Bill C-398.
Nancy Carswell, Shellbrook, SK.
