Recommendations For Navigating IP Terrain Emerge From UNITAID Forum

By Rachel Marusak Hermann for Intellectual Property Watch

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.

Several of the innovative health solutions developed or supported by UNITAID received praise such as the airline ticket levy and the Medicines Patents Pool.

In terms of future strategies, a number of recommendations related to intellectual property emerged from the two-day event on UNITAID’s pursuit of ensuring access to medicines for HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria. These recommendations included the development of a system to monitor IP landscape across all three diseases, evaluation of the impact of IP on new formulations and tools, collaboration with countries to use full flexibilities in the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), and support of generics outside of India.

The full list of UNITAID 3rd Consultative Forum Consensus Recommendations is here [pdf].