Another Big Turnout For Second Public Dialogue Of UN High-Level Panel On Medicines Access

Today in Johannesburg, South Africa, the second of two public dialogues was held by the United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines, drawing another packed room and many ideas, experiences and suggestions for solutions.

The archived livestream of the 17 March Johannesburg dialogue is available on the HLP website here. The agenda of the event is available here [pdf]. Today’s public segment was preceded by a closed session yesterday.

The High-Level Panel has been tasked by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in December to review and assess proposals and recommend solutions to address the “policy incoherence between the justifiable rights of inventors, international human rights law, trade rules and public health in the context of health technologies.” The panel is to complete work by June.

Intellectual Property Watch will follow with an in-depth story on key points from the event.

The agenda included: The intersection of human rights and public health in trade policy; the patent system and other voluntary and compulsory mechanisms alongside it, as models for innovation and access; and health systems strengthening to facilitate innovation and access.

It also included: Strengthening policy coherence of patent-related mechanisms; de-linking costs of research and development from costs of health technologies and new financing mechanisms; and reflections: advancing policy coherence to achieve proposals and strengthened coherence

Speakers today included numerous public health advocates and activists, academics, representatives of the generics and the research-based pharmaceutical industries, and governments.

High-Level Panel Co-Chair Ruth Dreifuss closed the day’s session by stating that the issue being addressed is a global problem, not only a developing country problem. She pointed to a lack of innovation and to high prices for medical products, and said a global view should respect the different needs of different countries.

The panel is not only focused on medicines, but also diagnostics, for example, which are “key in so many fields of public health.”

Dreifuss also said policymakers have to build on good practices and good experiences. They should see what had effect and take into account the limitations of those models and how they should be corrected or upgraded. They should also explore new solutions.

And on IP rights, she clarified that they are not authorised to consider IP rights as fundamental rights at the same level as HR and right to health. IP rights are tools, which have proved good tools in certain situation, for certain goods, and certain problems.