[Ip-health] Pharmalot: Health Ministers To Debate Patent Disputes

[Malini Aisola]

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--
[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/05/health-ministers-to-debate-patent-disputes/


Health Ministers To Debate Patent Disputes
15 May 2008
Ed Silverman

Health ministers from around the world will try next week to bridge
differences over how to overhaul patent rules that developing countries
say make life-saving medicines costly and inaccessible, Reuters writes.

The World Health Organization has struggled to encourage the development
of effective, affordable treatments for parasites and tropical diseases
that have long been overlooked by pharma. A draft WHO plan proposed two
years ago was rejected by both pharma and ooor nations as inadequate,
and failing to balance competing claims for lower prices and incentives
for developing costly treatments.

Earlier this month, an intergovernmental group convened to address those
problems failed to agree on alternatives to the prevailing patent system
that gives drugmakers the exclusive right to sell meds they develop over
a fixed period of time.

WHO spokesman Bill Kean said health ministers attending the United
Nations agency's annual World Health Assembly will try to iron out
disagreements that have impeded progress. "Some of these (differences)
we really do think will be sorted out during the WHA," he told a news
briefing in Geneva.

Development activists also see the May 19-24 meetings as a critical
moment for the drug access issue, which has also been taken up by the
World Trade Organization in an agreement that makes allowances for
developing countries to create or buy copycat versions of patented drugs.

The WTO's Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or
TRIPS, accord has been criticized as too limited to cope with the
problems poor countries face accessing meds to fight HIV, malaria
and other diseases that kill, blind and disable millions of people each
year.

"It is now up to the World Health Assembly in May to translate bold
ideas into concrete action," Doctors Without Borders said in a
statement. "What we need to see is a wider, more ambitious framework for
R&D and political leadership, in particular from WHO."

The US and other wealthy nations have resisted a wholesale reform of
intellectual property rules, which offer companies a return on their
large investments into developing new drugs, and help protect
against counterfeits.

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and
Associations has called patent
protections key to health innovation. Strong health care systems,
efficient markets and adequate regs are also needed to ensure people get
the treatments they need, says IFPMA director Harvey Bale.

"It is important to have a stable, enabling policy environment in each
of these areas to ensure a sustained flow of new medicines for the
benefit of patients worldwide," he says in a statement.

In addition to the patent question, delegates from the WHO's 193 member
states will consider next week how the U.N. agency should proceed in its
efforts to confront the threat of pandemic flu,
eradicate polio and fight obesity and diabetes.

They will also examine the links between climate change and health,
assess progress in achieving U.N. goals on reducing child mortality and
malnutrition, and consider ways to work more effectively with
other international agencies, Kean said.

The WHO leads the development of global public health policy, including
issuing advisories on which vaccines people need for international
travel and guidance for countries coping with disease
outbreaks or other emergencies.

It also collaborates with financing bodies such as the Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the GAVI Alliance and the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation to help improve standards of health care,
especially in poor parts of the world.

--

Malini Aisola

Knowledge Ecology International

1621 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA

Tel.:  +1.202.332.2670 Fax: +1.202.332.2673