Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The World Health Organization is under siege by private sector forces using their financial leverage to gain undue influence in the financially beleaguered United Nations agency, a developing country-oriented group has said.
High-level policymakers, industry leaders, law professors and other stakeholders came together in Geneva recently to discuss the how the role of intellectual property is evolving when it comes to developing, protecting, and providing medicines.
A group of public health experts gathered by the World Health Organization agreed today to continue a moratorium on research done on the H5N1 bird flu virus modified in a laboratory to be more transmissible between mammals. But they said research should continue on the naturally occurring version of the virus.
From advancing public-private partnerships and increasing international collaboration to promoting innovation in neglected therapy areas and developing new research and development models, policymakers have set a steady pace as they advance the 2012 global health agenda.
Changes continue at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria as the director of communications announced today that he is stepping down immediately after nearly a decade.
A key World Health Organization advisory group has invited stakeholders to consultations this month on the contribution of the private sector and others to global pandemic flu preparedness.
A leading supplier of generic antiretroviral medicines has signed an agreement to manufacture new HIV medicines for sale in developing countries, the Medicines Patent Pool announced today.
A range of some of the world’s top public and private partners in public health today announced an “unprecedented” level of cooperation to fight diseases primarily afflicting poorest populations worldwide for which there is insufficient research and development and inadequate health systems. But how the initiative will tie in with governments’ efforts at the World Health Organization to craft a global framework to address these issues remains to be seen.
The World Health Organization Executive Board this week agreed to propose to the May World Health Assembly the establishment of a mechanism for international collaboration on counterfeit and substandard medical products, but with the exclusion of trade and intellectual property issues.
The Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Michel Kazatchkine, announced that he would step down by 16 March in a letter published on the Fund’s website.
The World Health Organization Executive Board today is being asked to approve a draft chair's summary of this week's Board discussions on the path to sweeping reform of the UN agency. But the document is unusual, according to some observers, in that it addresses major changes without being considered a negotiation or decision. [Update: this draft was approved by the Board with only the change of deadline for comments to 17 February.]
The UN World Health Organization Executive Board opened its annual January meeting today with a substantive agenda of reform, election, and a variety of issues that touch on intellectual property rights, research and development and innovation. And with the organization in reform and funding straits in a rapidly changing world, the director general stressed the agency’s steadfast approach and role in addressing the increasing global inequality between rich and poor.