Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The global AIDS community meeting in Vienna last week ended with renewed determination to fight the epidemic but underlined an urgent need for increased funding to sustain scientific advances and universal access. Some warned against an intellectual property rights enforcement push threatening global access in particular through bilateral and regional trade agreements.
The World Health Organisation is following a complicated timeline for new mandates on combating fake medicines, creating alternative financing mechanisms for research and development on neglected diseases, and improving pandemic influenza preparedness.
Key international agencies for health, trade and intellectual property on Friday jointly organised a symposium on access to medicines in an effort to gather information and expertise as a basis of a collaborative response to the challenges of public health.
The 18th International AIDS conference opened its doors in Vienna on Sunday with a purpose of keeping the HIV issue high among international priorities in the context of a global economic crisis, and to promote universal access to treatment.
“Exactly a year ago, a very bad decision was taken” by the World Health Organization that now seems “unscientific and irrational,” said Council of Europe parliamentarian Paul Flynn in a late June presentation of a new report on the WHO's actions during the 2009 influenza pandemic.
But opinions heard at an ongoing review of the WHO’s pandemic response were mixed, with some praising the organisation’s work to protect public health and others critiquing what they say is suspicious secrecy.
Lynn C. Tyler writes: The litigation provisions of the recently-enacted legislation establishing a pathway to bring biosimilars to market contain “patent” ambiguities in key areas, particularly whether the various lists of patents to be litigated are exclusive. Courts will have to resolve these issues over the next several years, likely at great (and unnecessary) expense and uncertainty to litigants.
After two days of lively discussion, members of a World Trade Organization committee this week agreed to devote a day in October to an in-depth discussion on a waiver to WTO intellectual property rules aimed at boosting access to medicines for poor countries. In addition, some member countries presented concerns about the possible effect of a global enforcement push by developed countries and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) under negotiation outside WTO, while ACTA proponent countries sought to allay fears.
The final step in the establishment of a patent pool under international drug-purchasing mechanism UNITAID was taken today, the UN body announced.
"At no time, not for one second, did commercial interests enter my decision-making," Director General Margaret Chan of the World Health Organization declaration in a letter today defending the organisation's increasingly scrutinised response to an outbreak of H1N1, or 'swine flu.'
Global health authorities have been guilty of "grave shortcomings" in transparency and accountability to the public good in their handling of the pandemic influenza outbreak says a new draft resolution from the intergovernmental Council of Europe. A related investigative report from the British Medical Journal found evidence of "declarable financial conflicts of interests" among the experts advising the World Health Organization. But WHO denies any wrongdoing.
Following weeks of consultations, World Trade Organization members are set next week to discuss a proposal to review a little-used amendment of WTO intellectual property rules aimed at boosting availability of affordable medicines in developing countries.
World Health Organization members today took an important step closer to finding new ways to finance research and development into diseases afflicting developing countries.