Cancer Drugs: Innovation ‘Blackmail’ Leads To Unaffordable Prices, Delinkage Needed, Speakers Say 30/05/2017 by Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch 4 Comments What if you get an aggressive form of breast cancer, and the treatment exists but it is too expensive for you to get? You die. Tragic stories and the possibilities to avert them were centre stage at a panel last week on the margin of the ongoing World Health Assembly. Delinking the cost of research and development from the market prices of medicines was urged by speakers on the panel: representatives of cancer patients, civil society, and the Brazilian deputy ambassador.
Health R&D Still Underfunded – WHO Members Concerned, NGOs Call For More Ambition 29/05/2017 by Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment Hopes of stimulating research and development for diseases affecting primarily poor countries and vulnerable populations, through a strategic work plan at the World Health Organization, are dimmed by the lack of funding. An R&D project on a single-dose malaria cure had to be cut short, while a global observatory for health research and development, recently launched, might be hampered in its progress, according to officials.
Global Health R&D: Evidence, Priorities, Coordination 29/05/2017 by Mara Pillinger for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment World Health Assembly Agenda Item 13.5 is descriptively-yet-uninformatively labelled “Follow-up of the report of the Consultative Expert Working Group on Research and Development: Financing and Coordination (CEWG).” But that anodyne title actually masks an important milestone in the World Health Organization’s long-running efforts to increase R&D around neglected diseases and diseases of poverty.
Unlikely Alliance Of India, US Could Keep Medicines Access On WHO Agenda 28/05/2017 by Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch 4 Comments It is not often that on the matter of access to medicines, India and the United States agree at the World Health Organization. But the issue of access to medicines is rising on the international agenda and developed countries are feeling the bite of prices of new medicines. Core beneficiaries of the patent system held steady this week, but among their defenders, the issue is blurring as some countries, such as the Netherlands, Greece and Portugal, are not putting up with industry prices and are saying it.
Review Of WHO Public Health And IP Strategy: Help Needed On TRIPS Flexibilities 28/05/2017 by Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment International organisations, in particular the World Health Organization, should help poor countries implement the flexibilities enshrined in international trade rules, a number of developing countries said at the World Health Assembly on 26 May. WHO members in committee hailed and noted a report on the organisation’s strategy on public health, innovation and intellectual property, the first part of an overall review. Civil society had another take on the report, and deplored slow progress on access to medicines.
World Health Assembly Adopts Resolution To Fight Sepsis; Antimicrobial Resistance Major Threat 26/05/2017 by Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch 2 Comments Antimicrobial resistance is a growing health concern as was acknowledged by countries at the World Health Assembly this week, and a resolution was adopted to fight sepsis, which is a life-threatening blood stream infection for which there is growing resistance.
WHO Official: Medicines Should Not Be Priced At The Value Of A Life 26/05/2017 by William New, Intellectual Property Watch 1 Comment Member governments of the World Health Organization are increasingly talking about how to bring about “fair” pricing of medicines. And what’s clear is that it should not be based on how much you would pay to save your life, a senior WHO official said this week.
A Price Too Good To Be True 26/05/2017 by Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment Steven Tepp writes: Virtually every consumer in every country wants products and services as inexpensively as possible. Nowhere is that demand more acute than in health care, where quality of life, and life itself, is at stake. In Europe, most national governments use the monopsony power of a single-payer national health care system to negotiate (or dictate) what prices they will pay, an activity that has been considered “anti-competitive” in EU private markets. And some governments simply issue price controls.
Head Of WHO Health Systems Lays Out IP Issues At WHA 26/05/2017 by William New, Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment The annual World Health Assembly will address several issues related to intellectual property and innovation, Marie-Paule Kieny, assistant director-general for health systems and innovation at the World Health Organization, said in an interview this week. But a new initiative at WHO on fair pricing of medical products may not be among them in a significant way. [Update: the latest on the state of play on the UN High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines is being provided in real time below.]
WIPO Launches Strategic Plan 2017-2021 For Re:Search Program 25/05/2017 by Elise De Geyter for Intellectual Property Watch and William New Leave a Comment The World Intellectual Property Organization this week has striven to show its commitment to contributing to the debate on intellectual property and health, and the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, through advancement of its Re:Search program for the next five years.