Affordable drugs for developing countries.

In November 2002, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Africa’s major free trade bloc, applied to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for the right to manufacture low-cost drugs to treat AIDS. The Secretary General of the Organization Erastus Mwencha, in announcing this move, said that drugs must be cheaper as the world could not continue to see people dying for the sake of profits of the drug companies. The COMESA has applied for licensing from the WTO to allow them to manufacture drugs for AIDS, beginning in December 2002. Specifically, COMESA wanted the WTO to treat the area as one region so that drugs produced in one country could be sold in all other member states.