[Ip-health] Sisule Musungu (abstract) in the WHO Bulletin: Benchmarking progress in tackling the challenges of intellectual property, and access to medicines in developing countries

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

The whole text of this article may be downloaded from this url:

http://www.who.int/entity/bulletin/volumes/84/5/366.pdf

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http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/84/5/musungu0506abstract/en/index.html

Benchmarking progress in tackling the challenges of intellectual
property, and access to medicines in developing countries
Sisule F Musungu


ABSTRACT

The impact of intellectual property protection in the pharmaceutical
sector on developing countries has been a central issue in the fierce
debate during the past 10 years in a number of international fora,
particularly the World Trade Organization (WTO) and WHO. The debate
centres on whether the intellectual property system is: (1) providing
sufficient incentives for research and development into medicines for
diseases that disproportionately affect developing countries; and (2)
restricting access to existing medicines for these countries. The Doha
Declaration was adopted at WTO in 2001 and the Commission on
Intellectual Property, Innovation and Public Health was established at
WHO in 2004, but their respective contributions to tackling intellectual
property-related challenges are disputed. Objective parameters are
needed to measure whether a particular series of actions, events,
decisions or processes contribute to progress in this area. This article
proposes six possible benchmarks for intellectual property-related
challenges with regard to the development of medicines and ensuring
access to medicines in developing countries.