Canada's access to medicines regime: Promise or failure of humanitarian effort?

Abstract

There is often a gap between promises made politically and the will to implement these promises meaningfully. One example is Canada's Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR). CAMR was enacted following a WTO decision that changed global intellectual property rules, allowing countries to issue compulsory licences for the production and export of domestically patented medicines to countries without pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity. Ideally, CAMR would be a vital part of Canada's international assistance, However, in the three years since CAMR was implemented, this attempt to improve medicines access by the world's neediest appears instead to be largely a failure of Canadian humanitarian efforts.