E-DRUG: WHO/CIPIH report published (2)
--------------------------------------
A newly released report published by 16 independent and non-partisan civil
society organisations on the subject of IP, innovation and health may be
of interest to e-drug readers in light of the release of the WHO
Commission report addressing the same issues.
An English version of the report can be accessed via the International
Policy Network website,
http://www.policynetwork.net/uploaded/pdf/Civil_Society_text_web.pdf, or
alternatively at the Free Market Foundation,
http://www.freemarketfoundation.com/downloads/Civil_Society_text_web.pdf
A Spanish version of the press release can be accessed at the Instituto
Ecuatoriano de Economía Política:
http://www.ieep.org.ec/ieep/ieepsite/templates/articulos.aspx?articleid=527&zoneid=2;
The report identifies 50 per cent of people in parts of Africa and Asia
have no access to medicines due to harmful government policies.
Examples of harmful government interventions found in the report are:
Taxes and tariffs of up to 55 per cent on imported medicines price people
out of treatment.
Byzantine and costly registration requirements mean many medicines already
approved in the US, EU and Japan are simply not registered in most poor
countries because manufacturers cannot justify the investment in
registration.
Health insurance is hampered by government regulations, so the poor are
unable to obtain insurance and are only able to pay for treatments if they
have sufficient savings, or must rely on charity or meagre government
healthcare provision.
Price controls - which proponents claim benefit the poor - actually reduce
the availability of drugs, especially in distant rural regions, by making
it uneconomic for pharmacies to stock them. Even in relatively wealthy
South Africa, price controls have led to the closure of scores of rural
pharmacies - leaving thousands of poor people without any access to
medicines at all.
Inadequate protection for intellectual property in poor countries
undermines incentives to invest in R&D for the diseases of poverty by
making it more difficult to recover costs. The report found no evidence
that intellectual property protection had hampered access to medicines.
Low pay and poor conditions at government run hospitals and clinics mean
that a large number of trained medical professionals (doctors, nurses,
etc.) have emigrated to wealthier countries with better healthcare
systems.
The Civil Society report was motivated in part by a concern that the WHO's
Commission on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Health, would not
address these fundamental issues because of concerns about the response of
member governments.
Barun Mitra (Liberty Institute, India), one of the lead authors of the
report, said:
"Our report shows that, when it comes to medicines for the diseases of
poverty, governments are the main barriers to access and innovation.
Intellectual property is an important driver of innovation but in poor
countries governments currently prevent people from accessing cheap,
generic medicines that could cure many of the diseases they face. In such
circumstance, what is the point of producing new drugs for these diseases?
Governments must remove the taxes, tariffs and regulations that prevent
the sick from getting treatment."
Alec van Gelder
Research Fellow
International Policy Network
alec@policynetwork.net
---------
[Jamie Love reacted in IP-Health as follows:
This is a quite useful document, because it is the big pharma spin on
the CIPIH report. Clearly the industry did not want to take the
lead criticizing the report, and prefer that these industry funded
NGOs do it for them. The IPN report involved a fair amount of
planning and coordination. The reference to "civil society"
organizations is of course designed to confuse the press, by making
it sound as if it is independent from pharmaceutical industry, which
is not true. Note they don't advertise themselves as a pro-free
market group funded by drug companies -- and present themselves in
the language usually used to describe the industry critics. I find
this off-putting. It is interesting IPN uses John Kilama so much in
this report. This former Dupont executive spends a lot of time
pushing agricultural patents in Africa on behalf on the agricultural
biotechnology industry, and is a frequent speaker against compulsory
licensing of essential medicine patents. Jamie]