E-DRUG: Global Technical Consultative Meeting on Health R&D
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[Two press statements about the recently completed selection of health
R&D projects by the Global Technical Consultative Meeting hosted by WHO
- one from Health Action International and one from MSF. A key objective
behind the process has been to try and find innovative solutions to fund
R&D in recognition that the current patent system with private research
and profit interests does not (always) serve the interests of public
health. Both statements are negative and do not suggest that this
objective will be addressed. Cross-posted from IP-Health. DB]
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HAI STATEMENT
The Status Quo Wins Again: Selected R&D demonstration projects
disappoint, offer little progress
Geneva, December 2013- On December 4-5, experts at a Global Technical
Meeting, hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO), selected
biomedical research and development (R&D) 'demonstration projects' to go
forward and receive financing. This is an outcome of the process that
resulted from the Global Strategy and Action Plan on Public Health
Innovation and Intellectual Property, now referred to as the
Consultative Expert Working Group on Financing and Coordination on R&D
(CEWG). The purpose of demonstration projects are to test new R&D
approaches that enhance needs-driven R&D and access to results that can
be used on a large scale.
The Global Technical Meeting was the result of a process that reflected
a compromise; the demonstration projects would provide an initial step
away from the R&D framework status quo, which has been identified as
failing global health, towards a multilateral framework that is just,
inclusive and driven by health needs, rather than monopoly profits and
ensures worldwide access to innovative medicines. A key element of this
compromise process was that the demonstration projects would be used to
validate alternative mechanisms to incentivise needs-driven R&D, which
would ensure product affordability and access to the results of R&D, but
avoid market exclusivity through intellectual property rights rewards.
At the World Health Assembly in May 2013, Member States agreed that
demonstration projects should incorporate two core principles identified
as key to the enhancement of needs-driven, affordable innovation:
firstly, open knowledge innovation and, secondly, the de-linkage of the
costs of R&D from the price of the final product.
The eight projects that have now been selected, although perfectly
scientifically sound, do not divert from the R&D status quo and will
demonstrate little, at best, and, nothing, at worst, in terms of
establishing new innovation models that use alternative incentives to
the current monopoly driven model.
Innovative proposals, disruptive to the status quo, did actually make
the 22-proposal shortlist, but were eliminated in the final selection
exercise in Geneva and will not go forward. At first sight, this appears
to be the direct result of the criteria used for selection; however,
whether the demonstration project would test a new approach to R&D was
only used as a third-level criterion for selection. This is unfortunate
and Health Action International is deeply disappointed with the result.
It is difficult to imagine what lessons the selected demonstration
projects will offer the current system of global health R&D. They will
certainly not contribute to the search for a structural solution to the
current failure of global health R&D.
Health Action International
For more information please contact Policy Advisor Tessel Mellema:
tessel@haieurope.org<mailto:tessel@haieurope.org>