May 3, 2008

Today Ethan Guillen, Executive Director of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (www.essentialmedicine.org), issued the following statement on the World Health Organization Intergovernmental Working Group in Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property:

“We were pleased to see the advancement in the negotiations of important issues like technology transfer that promotes innovation of and access to medicines for the developing world. We’re hopeful that consensus recommendations on open licensing and other technology transfer provisions agreed to during this round will send a strong message to universities: they need to adopt policies that will free up the tools of innovation and make medicines discovered on campuses available at low-cost in the developing world.

“However, the lack of bold commitment by most of the rich countries is surprising to say the least. That there had to be stiff negotiations on the idea that the cost of medicines impedes access in the developing world makes you wonder if some negotiators hadn’t noticed that busloads of American retirees who have to hop across the U.S. border to Canada to get drugs they can afford. New incentive mechanisms are obviously necessary to promote R&D for medicines that don’t have a market in the developed world.

“Universities can lend a credible voice to the continuing effort but sadly, haven’t yet positively engaged. Given that the process will now continue beyond the November elections in the U.S., they now have a renewed opportunity to work toward a stronger final strategy.”

Today, NGOs at the WHO IGWG had an opportunity to give statements to the plenary session. Below are a number of statements made by civil society organizations, including the collaborative statement of the Churches delegation in which we participated.

Joint Statement of Churches Delegation

This statement was written by delegation members from Essential Action,
Third World Network, and Universities Allied for Essential Medicines.

1 May 2008

Statement of CMC - Churches’ Action for Health at WHO IGWG II bis

My name is Sarah Rimmington, and I am speaking on behalf of the CMC
Churches’ Action for Health delegation. We are pleased to address the
WHO Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) on public health, innovation
and intellectual property.

Medical research and development breakthroughs have made the world a
better and healthier place, thus serving the mission of justice, peace
and integrity of creation. Vaccines, antibiotics and drugs for
conditions such as HIV/AIDS have kept countless millions alive and
reduced untold suffering. Read more »

Prizes and Parasites

One subject attracting a great deal of attention this week at the IGWG meeting in Geneva is that of prizes as an alternative incentive approach for neglected disease R&D, with multiple different examples of prize proposals on the table. In following the negotiations, it has been have noted that there have been questions about the relative difficulty of various research programs discussed in the prize proposals that have been put forward. Specifically, the proposal on Chagas disease has been questioned on the grounds that it is too difficult of a problem, citing the lack of success to date. While it is indeed true that we currently lack effective treatments and vaccines for Chagas - and, in fact, for the majority of parasitic diseases - there is no a reason to think that these diseases are insoluble. We are aggressively pursuing treatment for extremely complex diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and, despite the enormous amounts of money being thrown at this disease, many doubt that a cure or even an effective treatment will ever be found. Parasitic diseases, while not simple to address, should in no way be thought of in the same category of complexity as diseases such as Alzheimer’s - a disease to which we devote many times the amount of resources. In fact, given the relatively tiny amount of funding put towards parasitic diseases thus far, it is somewhat amazing that we have made as much progress as we have. Read more »

The post title and the text have been updated to reflect that the category BIO was in also included invited entities, another special category included with the experts.

Suerie Moon, a Harvard UAEMer, in Geneva with MSF this week, has compiled information on the IGWG delegations.

You’ll note that 18% of “experts” are from BIO, including Janna Tom, the VP for Public Policy at AUTM.

From Suerie:

Data included:
1. Country delegation size
2. Delegates categorized as Geneva-based (permanent mission), intellectual property specialist, or health specialist (includes ministries of health, drug regulatory authorities,
and related entities).
3. Head of delegation categorized as Geneva, IP or Health.

Interesting findings:
1. IFPMA (International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association) comprises 33% of NGO delegates.
2. BIO (Biotech industry association) comprises 18% of “Expert” and invited entity Delegates
3. Of the 27 OECD country delegations, average delegation size was 7.7 persons. Percentage of intellectual property specialists was 12%, health specialists was 34%.
4. Of the 39 Least Developed Country delegations, average delegation size was 2.7 persons. Percentage of intellectual property specialists was 2%, health specialists was 45%.

Download the spreadsheet here.