Treaty On ‘Medicines Crime’ Not Best Response To Counterfeit/Substandard Medicines, Paper Says 22/07/2015 by Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)By Rishi Dhir for Intellectual Property Watch A recent paper by public health experts argues that a treaty on ‘medicines crime’ to combat counterfeit and substandard medicines may not be the best step forward. Rather, it proposes to form an international agreement to “ensure that all proven effective and necessary medicines are affordable, available, and of assured quality,” if the goal is to protect the interests of people and public health. The paper, “Counterfeit medicines and substandard medicines: Different problems requiring different solutions,” was published in in the Journal of Public Health Policy, a paid access site. The paper is authored by Ellen ‘t Hoen, a lawyer specialising in medicines law and policy, former executive director of the Medicines Patent Pool, and Fernando Pascual, a pharmacist specialising in access to medicines and quality assurance of pharmaceuticals in developing countries. The paper refers to a series of articles published in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene on 20 April 2015, which according to the authors advocated for a global convention coupled with a Model Law on medicines crime to combat the problem of falsified and substandard medicines. The authors urge that such a measure should be met with caution. Looking at the problem from the lens of medicines crime, the authors argue, overlooks “the best approach to counter the supply of illegal and dangerous medicines: ensuring the availability of affordable, quality assured essential medicines.” Rishi Dhir is an intern at Intellectual Property Watch. He holds a Juris Doctor with honours from the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He also holds dual Bachelor Honour Degrees in Mathematics and Business Administration from the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University. Rishi has an interest in a variety of IP issues including copyright law, piracy and Internet governance. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window) Related "Treaty On ‘Medicines Crime’ Not Best Response To Counterfeit/Substandard Medicines, Paper Says" by Intellectual Property Watch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.