UNAIDS Board Carries Forward Multi-Agency Work On IP Barriers To Medicines Access

A meeting of the Board of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has concluded with a set of decisions showing that the Board went farther than just noting the UNAIDS secretariat report on intellectual property-related barriers preventing access to medicines. And the Board, after lengthy discussions, also called on UNAIDS to facilitate discussions on the high-profile report of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel for Access to Medicines.

The 39th meeting of the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board (PCB) was scheduled for 6-8 December [corrected]. The meeting was chaired by Switzerland, with Ghana acting as vice-chair and Ecuador as rapporteur (IPW, Public Health, 7 December 2016).

The “Synthesis report [pdf] of existing research and literature on intellectual property related and other factors impacting the availability, affordability, and accessibility of treatment and diagnostics for HIV and co-infections in low and middle-income countries,” included recommendations, which were considered by the board.

One of these was to explore the recommendations included in the report of the UN High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines, “and apply them, where appropriate to the global AIDS response to ensure improved policy coherence across the Joint Programme, in order to support countries to achieve the health-related Sustainable Development Goals, especially those pertaining to access to health technologies and innovation.”

Here are the decisions for agenda item 6, on the synthesis report:

“7.1 Takes note of the report;

7.2 Reaffirms the UNAIDS Strategy 2016-2021 and the mandates therein to be implemented by the Joint Programme on the many matters relevant to access toHIV/AIDS medicines, including intellectual property;

7.3 Requests the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS to report to the 41^st PCB meeting on progress made in implementing the UNAIDS Strategy 2016-2021 in this regard;

7.4 Takes note of the report of the UN High Level Panel on Access to Medicines (UN HLP) and requests the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS to facilitate further discussions on access to medicines bearing in mind, as appropriate, the UN HLP report and other relevant reports, including the trilateral report of WHO/WIPO/WTO Promoting Access to Medical Technologies and Innovation and keep the PCB informed of the matter;

7.5 Requests the Joint Programme, within its mandate and available resources, together with all relevant partners, and in collaboration with member states, to further identify data gaps, best practices and challenges therein, collect and analyze the necessary data including existing data, in order to better support countries to address intellectual property-related barriers, as one important barrier, as well as the other barriers impacting on availability, affordability, and accessibility of medicines, treatment and diagnostics for HIV and HIV co-infections and co-morbidities in low and middle-income countries;”

According to a developing country sources, the United States asked that their disagreement on point 7.4 be recorded.