Global Health Governance

Chapter 7 moves further out in scale to articulate some of the regional axes of power, linking Brazil, India and South Africa, that have challenged global forms of governance that limit access to essential HIV medicines. The first section of this chapter extends the discussion on patent regulations introduced in Chapters 1 and 2, with a detailed focus on the politics surrounding the World Trade Organization’s early role in governing access to essential HIV medicine through the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement. It then turns to consider some of the ‘patent wars’ that were waged by countries like South Africa, Brazil and India. And it explores the crucial role played by India in reverse engineering HIV medicines that would otherwise have been inaccessible to most governments in the Global South due to their pricing (protected by patents) in the Global North.