[Ip-health] IPS: WHO Paves Way for Medicines for the Poor

[Sheila.SHETTLE@geneva.msf.org]

WHO Paves Way for Medicines for the Poor
Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA , May 29 (IPS) - The World Health Assembly concluded its annual
session over the weekend with the adoption of a resolution that could
change the concept of drug R&D, and open the door to a system that gives
the world's poor greater access to medicines.

The resolution approved by the Assembly, the supreme decision-making body
of the World Health Organisation (WHO), urges the 192 member states to make
the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals a strategic sector, thus committing
themselves to making R&D of medicines consistent with public interest needs
a priority.

This was the response of health ministers at last week's meeting in Geneva
to the concerns of developing countries and humanitarian non-governmental
organisations, which criticised the tendency of transnational
pharmaceutical companies to concentrate their R&D efforts on diseases
prevalent in affluent countries.

The Assembly resolution is probably one of the most important ever taken on
this issue, because it paves the way for a debate on intellectual property
rights with respect to drugs, to take place over the next 10 or 15 years,
the associate director of WHO's essential medicines programme, Germ=E1n
Vel=E1squez, told IPS.

The decision will also have repercussions for patenting mechanisms
regulated by agreements of the World Intellectual Property Organisation
(WIPO) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the director of the
U.S.-based non-governmental Consumer Project on Technology, James Love,
told IPS.

In the case of the WTO, patent regulations are contained in the Agreement
on Trade- Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

Activists frequently refer to the "10/90 gap", according to which only 10
percent of investment in R&D of new drugs is aimed at the so-called "orphan
diseases," which afflict 90 percent of the world population who live in the
developing South.

In Saturday's resolution, the WHO is attempting to reconcile the creation
of new medicines with the need for them to be immediately accessible to
people, Vel=E1squez explained to IPS.

Under the present intellectual property regulations, patents may protect
the sale of drugs for as long as 35 years, putting those medicines out of
the reach of poor people because of their high prices.

Love pointed out that under the current system, pharmaceutical firms argue
that the high prices of drugs are necessary due to the need to finance R&D.


But the Assembly's resolution now urges member states to work with the WHO
and other international bodies to support R&D of essential medicines, which
are used to treat the most common illnesses in poor countries.

Love explained that the WHO decision will also have consequences for the
bilateral trade treaties that the United States is negotiating with other
countries, the intellectual property sections of which are called
"TRIPS-plus" because some of the clauses are even more restrictive for
developing nations than the original WTO agreement.

Negotiators for the United States try to get their partners in these
bilateral trade treaties to introduce more stringent intellectual property
rights, or accept higher prices for drugs, arguing that such policies
promote R&D of medicines by the transnational pharmaceutical companies,
Love said.

But that is going to change in the bilateral negotiations, and also in the
multilateral agreements of the WTO and WIPO, because the old paradigm of
TRIPS and "TRIPS-plus" will be replaced by the new paradigm for R&D of
essential medicines, the expert said..

The World Health Assembly session, which began on Monday May 22, addressed
two separate proposals concerning questions of public health, innovation
and intellectual property rights.

One proposal, put forward by Kenya and Brazil, called for the creation of a
framework to define priorities in world health, and support for the basic
work of drug R&D.

The other initiative arose from a report prepared by a commission,
designated by the WHO and presided by former Swiss president Ruth Dreifuss.
It proposed that member states should act to correct defects in the cycle
of drug innovation that prevented people living in developing countries
from getting proper medical attention.

Intellectual property rights are important, but as an instrument, not as an
end in themselves, states the Dreifuss Commission report, which adds that
their relevance to promoting necesssary innovation depends on the context
and circumstances.

The Assembly accepted the proposal from Kenya and Brazil, to create an
intergovernmental working group to draw up a strategy and an action plan
that would guide future work on innovation and public health.

Non-governmental organisations praised the Assembly's decision, which
Vel=E1squez called "historic."

Love declared himself "impressed" by the result. "This is much better than
we had thought," he said.

Doctors Without Borders/M=E9decins Sans Fronti=E8res (MSF), a leading
humanitarian medical aid organisation, also celebrated the decision.

This week we have seen health ministers take a leadership role and show
that they want to establish priorities and find new ways of financing the
development of new products so as to ensure that everybody has access to
innovations, said Ellen 't Hoen, the director of MSF's campaign for access
to essential medicines.

The resolution, based on the proposal sponsored by Kenya and Brazil, will
ensure that innovation in the field of medicine will be guided by patients'
needs, and not simply by profit, the MSF expert said. (END/2006)


+++++++++++++++++++++
Sheila Shettle
Communications Officer
M=E9decins Sans Fronti=E8res
Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
Rue de Lausanne 78
1211 Geneva
Switzerland
+ 41.22.849.8403
sheila.shettle@geneva.msf.org
www.accessmed-msf.org