Original news and analysis on international IP policy
World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan today made a strident pitch to WHO member governments to invest in the well-known United Nations agency, citing several unique and essential aspects of the organisation. The WHO Executive Board is meeting this week to address major reform of the WHO, in part due to a severe funding shortage but reaching into its place in the global public health spectrum.
The World Health Organization-led working group of member states addressing “substandard/spurious/falsely-labelled/falsified/counterfeit” (SSFFC) medical products has reached consensus on a new mechanism to prevent and control SSFFC medical products and associated activities. The creation of the new mechanism comes as the future of WHO involvement in an interagency anti-counterfeiting taskforce is in question.
“Neglected tropical diseases are century-old diseases and today we see new hope,” Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organisation, told a crowd at yesterday’s launch of a new public-private collaboration to develop medicines for the poorest countries. The project, called Re:Search, was launched at the World Intellectual Property Organization.
The World Intellectual Property Organization, in conjunction with the World Health Organization, private sector and foundation partners, is preparing to launch a new voluntary database for the sharing of intellectual property for research and development on medicines, vaccines and diagnostics for neglected diseases, according to sources in Geneva.
The third consultative forum of drug-purchasing mechanism UNITAID held in Geneva on 4-5 October resulted in a set of recommendations related to intellectual property rights and medicines access. The forum provided the opportunity for a wide array of global health actors, industry and country representatives to review the organisation’s progress in the last five years and to provide input on its future activities.
The Medicines Patent Pool, which negotiates voluntary licences for lower pharmaceutical prices, today announced the signing of an agreement with generics producer Aurobindo Pharma Limited to manufacture antiretroviral medicines. The Patent Pool has recently come under criticism from AIDS activists concerned about its July licence agreement with drug company Gilead, and it remains to be seen if this action will address their concerns.
In reaction to the recent IP-Watch Inside Views post “Health Impact Fund – Raising Issues of Distribution, IP Rights and Alliances,” by Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and Proochista Ariana, the authors offer a response on behalf of Incentives for Global Health (IGH), the non-profit organization that is developing the Health Impact Fund (HIF) proposal.
This piece raises several issues with the public health financing proposal called the Health Impact Fund. It questions the relative distribution of costs and benefits; the persistent issue of intellectual property rights; as well as a lack of alliance with existing efforts to increase innovation of and access to essential medicines for the poor.
United Nations members this month are setting the future course for global action against a rising public health problem well-known in developed countries and spreading to developing countries: noncommunicable diseases. But whether they will – or should - address concerns that intellectual property rights issues might interfere with access to treatments for such diseases as diabetes, cancer, or heart disease remains to be seen.
The greatest threat to global public health is not infectious diseases according to the World Health Organization. In a report released this week, the WHO found that noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are the top cause of death worldwide. The report details the NCD situation in 193 countries and comes as world leaders prepare to meet at the United Nations high-level meeting on NCDs in New York on 19-20 September.
The annual summer shuffle of the mission staff in Geneva has been particularly active this year for those with responsibility for intellectual property rights, with several key diplomats packing their bags, and new ones arriving.
Gilead's recently announced ARV licenses to the Medicines Patent Pool, although positive in some respects, still unreasonably limit the geographical access of key middle-income countries and restrict the sourcing of APIs and products to Indian companies, meaning that both generics companies and excluded countries will need to make strategic decisions to bypass the defects in the licenses, writes Brook Baker.