[Ip-health] IP-Watch: WHO Elevates IP Issues To Director Ge neral’s Office; Zucker To Depart

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://ip-watch.org/weblog/wp-trackback.php?p=831

20 November 2007
WHO Elevates IP Issues To Director General’s Office; Zucker To Depart


posted by William New @ 3:10 pm

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By William New
The World Health Organization, which has intensively debated
intellectual property rights issues in recent years, has restructured
its management of the issues, elevating IP to the director general’s
office.

“[The restructuring] shows the importance that the director general is
giving to this particular issue, and reinforces what WHO is already
doing in advising countries on IPR issues based on the existing
mandate,” said a WHO official.

The official added that intellectual property and innovation issues
are now going to be “one single body” dealing with the issue,
concentrated in the director general’s office.

The move will lead to the departure of Howard Zucker, the assistant
director general for health technology and pharmaceuticals, and a
somewhat polarising figure. Zucker came to the WHO from the Bush
administration in 2006 (IPW, WHO, 19 September 2006). He headed the
difficult Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation
and Intellectual Property (IGWG), which will move the director
general’s office. He also brought significant attention to the problem
of counterfeit medicines. It is unclear what Zucker’s next plans are.

The IGWG is mandated by the 2006 World Health Assembly to find
solutions to research on and access to medicines for diseases
predominantly affecting developing countries by the May 2008 annual
Health Assembly. The second IGWG ended recently with progress but no
decision (IPW, WHO, 10 November 2007).

A new team for public health, innovation and intellectual property has
been created, according to Director General Margaret Chan’s 20
November message to staff, first circulated by the ip-health listserv
and confirmed with the WHO.

Effective immediately, Zucker’s cluster, Health Technologies and
Pharmaceuticals, will be merged into the Health Systems and Services
(HSS) cluster under the HSS assistant director general, and
eliminating Zucker’s post, according to a WHO source.

Now HSS will be comprised of the departments of Health Policy,
Development and Services (HDS), Health System Financing (HSF), Human
Resources for Health (HRH), the Health Systems and Services
Partnership and Coordination Team (PCO), and the departments of
Essential Health Technologies (EHT), Medicines Policy and Standards
(PSM), and Technical Cooperation for Essential Drugs and Traditional
Medicine (TCM). The departments of PSM and TCM will be merged with
details to come.

On the new IP and innovation team reporting directly to the director
general’s office will be Malebona (Precious) Matsoso, director of TCM,
and German Velasquez, associate director at TCM, who will join Elil
Renganathan, the executive secretary of WHO’s secretariat on IGWG.

In her message, Chan said: “Access to safe, effective, affordable
medicines and other technologies is a fundamental component of an
effective health system.”

William New may be reached at wnew@ip-watch.ch.

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