“Mini-EB” WHO Meeting This Week Will Discuss IP Report, Resolution

In preparation for the World Health Assembly in May, a group representing the World Health Organization (WHO) executive board will meet this week to discuss a recent WHO report on intellectual property rights and public health as well as a draft resolution based on the report developed by the WHO.

“It is a kind of ‘mini-executive board’ meeting,” a WHO spokesperson said.

Twelve members representing the six WHO regions will participate at the 28 April meeting from the following countries: Australia, Bhutan, Brazil, Canada, Iceland, Japan, Kenya, Madagascar, Pakistan, Portugal, Sudan, and Thailand, a source said.

“A report of the meeting will be forwarded to the World Health Assembly (WHA) along with the draft resolution,” another WHO spokesperson told Intellectual Property Watch. The WHA will take place on 22-26 May.

The report from the WHO Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public Health (CIPIH) was not ready as scheduled for the January executive board meeting. It was therefore decided that a small group of representatives from the six WHO regions should meet before the WHA to look at the report, a WHO spokesperson said.

Since the January executive board meeting took place on 23-27 January 2006, the CIPIH report has been published, on 3 April (IPW, Public Health, 3 April 2006). The WHO has prepared a draft resolution based on it as was mandated at the January meeting. The draft resolution was sent out to member states last week, a WHO spokesperson said.

One developing country source said there had been a lot of debate on whether the WHO was allowed to draft a resolution on behalf of the member states.

Separately, a resolution co-sponsored by Brazil and Kenya on a new global framework for essential health research and development (R&D) was forwarded to the WHA by the executive board in January (IPW, Public Heath, 28 January 2006).

At the executive board meeting in January it was discussed whether a separate resolution should be developed based on the report, whether it should be merged with the Brazil and Kenya resolution or whether there should not be any resolution at all.

One developed country source doubted, however, that there would be enough support for merging the CIPIH resolution with the Brazil and Kenya resolution.

Another developed country source predicted that the two intellectual property related resolutions would be among the most important topics at the WHA, and said that after the 28 April meeting it would be clearer where one was going with this issue.

Developing Countries to Meet

On 27 April, Brazil and Kenya will co-host a meeting at the United Nations to discuss the Brazil and Kenya R&D resolution vis-à-vis the CIPIH resolution, sources say. A developing country official said that they would decide on a strategy for their resolution at the meeting.
The developed country source said that no such meeting had been scheduled among developed countries before the 28 April meeting.

MSF Urges Action Based on Report

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today urged member governments that are to meet on 28 April to discuss the CIPIH report and ensure that “the report’s analysis on the impact of intellectual property on access to medicines is not lost to follow-up, and that its conclusions and recommendations are acted upon in a determined manner.”

It notes that the report provides “a wealth of evidence” that the current drug development system is “fundamentally flawed,” and the meeting on Friday will be the first opportunity to discuss comprehensive reform of the system.

MSF points out that “the report concludes that intellectual property is irrelevant in stimulating innovation for many of the diseases affecting people in developing countries, where patients have limited purchasing power.” Pharmaceutical industry groups have challenged this assertion.

MSF also expresses its support for the Brazil and Kenya R&D resolution, saying that “one immediate way to ensure that the work of the CIPIH will have solid follow-up” would be for governments and the WHO to promote this resolution.