E-DRUG: MSF intervention at WHO EB on Expert Working Group report
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Hello
Please find below the intervention delivered on Tuesday 19 January by
Michelle Childs, Director of Policy and Advocacy at Medecins Sans
Frontieres' Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines under agenda item
4.3 Public health, innovation and intellectual property: global strategy
and plan of action.
Contact numbers are at the foot of this message. Thanks.
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Thank you Chair.
Medecins Sans Frontieres will focus our comments on the executive summary
of the report from the WHO Expert Working Group on R&D Financing.
We wish to highlight a number of areas of concern in relation to the
analysis and recommendations in the Executive Summary. In particular, it
does not build on the conclusions of the CIPIH report and the Global
Strategy and Plan of Action in key areas, such as the need to develop
proposals for financing mechanisms that delink the costs of R&D from the
price of health products to deliver both innovation and access.
It appears to endorse the role of intellectual property as an incentive for
research. This goes against the findings of the CIPIH report , which
clearly found that intellectual property fails as a tool to stimulate R&D
for diseases affecting millions of poor people in developing countries, and
acts as a barrier to accessing life-saving medicines.
The criteria used to select and evaluate the proposals appear not to have
been changed, despite the flaws which favoured the status quo, identified
by civil society and Member States in the public hearing . The Global
Strategy aims to promote new thinking. The summary’s recommendations
however predominantly favour those organisations and companies currently
involved in R&D, and assume that they should be the focus of designing a
new system and will be the main beneficiaries of proposals.
It has discarded proposals that seek to delink the cost of R&D from the
price of health tools, and proposals from Member States and civil society
that suggest new norms for the coordination and funding of R&D .
We are also concerned, as others, about the process, as it is reported that
representatives from the pharmaceutical industry appear to have had early
access to confidential documents, and had the opportunity to potentially
influence the recommendations now before the EB.
Such events and flaws cast doubt on the validity of the summary’s review of
proposals, and on the approach the EWG has taken. We note the proposals
to review the full report and support those proposals, to assess whether it
is consistent with the Global Strategy and Plan of Action, and if necessary
to amend the selection criteria to ensure consistency with the direction
given by the CIPIH and the Global Strategy.
However we note that the implementation of the Global Strategy should not
be delayed, and we urge Member States and WHO to lead on a pro-health
approach to priority setting and financing of R&D and the management of
intellectual property.
Thank you Chair.
-ENDS-
James Arkinstall
Managing Editor
MSF Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
office +33 1 40 21 28 35
mobile + 33 6 13 99 77 51
James ARKINSTALL <James.ARKINSTALL@paris.msf.org>