The following groups and individuals have written to Anand Grover, the Special Rapporteur for the United Nations on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health, to lodge a complaint about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP is a regional free trade agreement being negotiated by the governments of Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, Peru, Vietnam and the United States.

On Tuesday's discussion at the 128th Executive Board on the Draft WHO HIV/AIDS strategy 2011–2015, the United States made a strong intervention (delivered by Dr. Nils Daulaire, Director, Office of Global Health Affairs, Department of Health and Human Services) in support of the Medicines Patent Pool drawing attention to the fact that the draft HIV/AIDS strategy while making reference to a more competitive market for ARVs, failed to recognized the importance of the Medicines Patent Pool.

Here below are the remarks of the US on this point:

Today USTR provided some additional insight into negotiations of a regional, Asia-Pacific trade agreement, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement. The USTR web page on the TPP negotiations is http://www.ustr.gov/tpp. At present, the TPP negotiators include Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Japan and Canada have expressed interest in joining the negotiations, and USTR clearly would like to design an agreement that will be open to other countries. Our discussions focused on the intellectual property chapter in the agreement.

In advance of the 21st session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR 21), WIPO is holding a Global Meeting on Emerging Copyright Licensing Modalities on 4-5 November 2010 in Geneva which endeavors to facilitate 'Access to Culture in the Digital Age'. The program for this Global Meeting can be found here: http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/2010/wipo_cr_lic_ge_10/program.html.