[Ip-health] Press Release Nov 6, 2007 on IGWG

[Manon Ress]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NOVEMBER 6, 2007
12:30 PM


CONTACT:  Doctors Without Borders

UN Health Talks Could Lead to Urgently Needed Drugs and Diagnostics
But opposition from some governments could keep drug prices high and
out of reach

GENEVA - November 5 - Health talks opening today at the United
Nations in Geneva have the potential to change the way medical
research is conducted and ensure that urgently needed products are
developed and made accessible, the international medical humanitarian
organisation Doctors Without Borders/M=E9decins Sans Fronti=E8res (MSF)
and Knowledge Ecology International said today.

Representatives from ministries of health are gathering today for the
second round of negotiations of the Intergovernmental Working Group
for Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property (IGWG). They
are charged with coming up with a plan of action to ensure new
medical products are developed, and existing ones are made affordable.

"The R&D system is broken, it is not delivering," said Dr. Tido von
Schoen-Angerer, Director of MSF's Access to Essential Medicines
Campaign. "Take tuberculosis, for example; because tests are either
antiquated or too high-tech, we don't have any practical tool to
diagnose TB in people with HIV, who are precisely the ones most at
risk of dying. And because drugs to treat resistant strains of TB are
too weak, up to 20 percent of HIV uninfected and two-thirds of HIV
infected patients with multidrug- resistant TB, die during treatment."

Governments at the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2006 created
the IGWG following the release of a WHO report that said that
intellectual property is not a significant factor in contributing to
innovation for diseases that disproportionately affect developing
countries. Similarly, a Lancet study concluded that only one percent
of the 1,556 drugs developed in the last twenty-five years targeted
neglected diseases and tuberculosis, although these diseases account
for over 10 percent of the disease burden.

The IGWG represents the first chance for countries to begin building
a system for medical innovation and access to medicines that
prioritises such diseases, develops needed health tools, and makes
them affordable.

"This is an unprecedented opportunity to change the paradigm," said
James Love, Director of Knowledge Ecology International (KEI). "The
IGWG has been asked to de-link the cost of R&D from the price of
medicines. This is enormously important. We need new mechanisms and
institutional responses to move toward a paradigm of innovation plus
access, rather than a set of poorly functioning trade-offs. The big
ideas in the negotiation are patent pools, prizes, and a treaty on
medical R&D. They are also the most controversial."

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Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@keionline.org,

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Il vaut mieux remuer une question, sans la d=E9cider, que la d=E9cider,
sans la remuer.
Pens=E9es, essais, maximes et correspondance de J. Joubert  p.249
http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=3DGallica&O=3DNUMM-88671
Translation: It is better to debate a question without settling it
than to settle a question without debating it