The United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines hosted its final “Global Dialogue” in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 17 March 2016. Campaigners from the Treatment Action Campaign held a large rally outside the conference demanding reform of patent laws. Inside the meeting, hundreds of people from around the world joined online and in-person – from industry, government, civil society groups, multilateral organizations and academia – to discuss new ideas and solutions to increase access to medicines, vaccines and diagnostics and promote innovation in health technologies.
Recognizing
the global nature of the challenge, experts from Asia and the Pacific were
video conferenced into the meeting from Bangkok to join the solutions-focused
meeting which saw lively debate on a range of topics including human rights,
patent pools, intellectual property rights, public-private partnerships, and
alternative sources for R&D financing. Patient groups were a critical part
of the meeting, offering very personal perspectives on the challenges facing
the panel.
“I am one of
the South African ladies who struggled to get Herceptin for my breast cancer,”
said Tobeka Daki, a patient and health activist. “As a result, four
months ago, I was diagnosed with bone cancer of the spine, and I am here today
asking the panel to please help South Africans get this drug, because
chemotherapy alone cannot cure this type of breast cancer.”
The Panel
was convened in November 2015 by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon to address the policy incoherence between intellectual property laws
and access to medicines. Following a call for new ideas and potential
solutions, the Panel received 178 contributions from industry, government,
civil society groups, multilateral organizations and academia. In the last two
weeks, the Panel held two global dialogues - in London and Johannesburg - to
allow participants to discuss the tensions between intellectual property laws
and access to medicines and propose solutions.
“High prices
mean that too many don’t have access to the medicines they need. This means we
need another way to pay for R&D, and here’s where the important concept of
delinkage is so central,” said Suerie Moon, co-director
at the Project on Innovation and Access to Technologies for Sustainable
Development at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. “Delinkage implies that we need to pay
for R&D with public money. We need to demand a fair public return on public
investment. This means no monopolies on medicines that are financed with public
money. In order to realize this, we need to find a way to work together as a
global community so that all governments will contribute fairly to developing
R&D costs.”
The
Treatment Action Campaign released a statement
and a ‘Johannesburg
Declaration’ after the meeting. The statement outlined their
expectations for the panel: “The UN High-Level Panel offers a
unique opportunity to reassess the way society ensures that new medicines
are developed and made available to all people who need them. A variety of
alternatives and/or changes to the current patent-based innovation system
have been proposed. We consider many of these proposals to be feasible
and implementable should they be backed up with sufficient political
will and commitment.”
Both
dialogues saw constructive debates between stakeholders. Trade and industry
representatives are part of the High-Level Panel and have been active in the
Panel’s various discussions in London and Johannesburg.
“I think the
work of the panel is very timely. We need to review the balance between
innovation and access. We need to make sure that companies like mine are able
to invest in R&D for treatment for tomorrow so that patients who need them
get access to those products,” said Jon Pender, Vice President of Government
Affairs at GlaxoSmithKline.
“We’ve heard a lot about the issues of R&D and patents, but actually for
the vast majority of essential medicines that patients need, there is no
intellectual property on them at all, there's no copyright, there are no
patents.”
Following
the two dialogues, the Panel will meet again at the end of the month to discuss
the input they’ve received so far and start to develop recommendations for the
United Nations Secretary-General. A report, which will include the
recommendations from the Panel, will be released in June 2016. As the meeting
wrapped up, the co-chair of the High-Level Panel gave key takeaways.
“It is clear
that we face a global problem, not just a problem of developing countries,”
said Ruth Dreifuss, former President of Switzerland and co-chair of the panel.
“We have heard from stakeholders about the good practices and experiences that
we can build on. But, we cannot forget some of the limitations of these models
and the need for new approaches. You can guarantee that we will use all these
interventions as food for thought and action.”
No comments:
Post a Comment