Supporting WHO - Royal Thai Government (RTG) Country Cooperation Strategy (CCS) on International Trade and Health

With the increase of regional and bilateral trade, the direction of trade agreements and policies has changed, and concern on the impact on health is increasing. The focus of international trade has shifted towards new trade issues such as intellectual property, government procurement, competitive laws, labour, environment and state-owned enterprises. The scope of trade is not only confined to export and import of goods and services but expanded to cover systems or situations that are related to trade such as access to technology/medicine and medicine pricing systems. Balancing international trade and health is now receiving higher attention at the global and national policy levels. For example, Sustainable Development Goal 3.b focuses on TRIPS flexibility to ensure access to affordable essential medicine; and at the country level, the Thailand Global Health Strategy includes international trade policy that balances trade and health benefits as one of the key issues of the Strategy. Apart from being a member of a multilateral WTO trade agreement, Thailand has signed 12 regional and bilateral free trade agreements and is in the process of negotiation for another five agreements and interested in participating in the Transpacific Partnership (TPP). Optimizing the benefits from these trade agreements while minimizing health impact, even possibly with health benefits, are the main concerns.