[Ip-health] IP-Watch: WHO Or Who Should Guarantee The Right To Health?

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/06/24/who-or-who-should-guarantee-the-r=
ight-to-health/


24 June 2009
WHO Or Who Should Guarantee The Right To Health?
By William New @ 1:48 pm

With implementation of the World Health Organization strategy on
intellectual property and innovation beginning in earnest,
international experts this week debated how human rights could be
infused into global health strategies - including the possibility of
new international agreements on research and development - and whether
WHO is up to the task.

WHO Director General Margaret Chan said in a recent speech =93we have
long had to sell health to the highest bidder,=94 a quote highlighted by
Andrew Clapham, director of the Geneva Academy of International
Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.

Clapham said health care has had to be sold to ministries of finance
as an investment, as human capital, and as an engine for productivity,
when =93in a better world health would be marketed for its own sake, as
a basic human right.=94

Clapham was speaking at a book launch and symposium on 23 June
entitled, =93Realizing the Right to Health: Whose Role is it Anyway?=94

The connection between intellectual property rights and the promotion
of innovation in a market economy and the health considerations that
might mitigate against overly stringent IP policies has increased the
profile of public health, said Gian Luca Burci, general counsel at
WHO, speaking in his personal capacity at the event.

The WHO global strategy and plan of action on public health,
innovation and intellectual property =93will move more into full
implementation mode now,=94 he told Intellectual Property Watch
afterward. The small team managing the global strategy had =96 in the
year since its adoption in May 2008 =96 spent most of their energy on
finishing outstanding parts of the negotiation, he said. But with the
text complete as of the late May World Health Assembly (IPW, WHO, 22
May 2009), work can turn to actual implementation.

But the WHO is reluctant to take the leadership role in the more
political issues. In the midst of the =93growing political importance of
health,=94 said Burci, WHO has been =93a little shy in proclaiming the
right to health at a policymaking level.=94 This shyness is due in part
to the human right to health being seen as controversial, as
potentially involving a political fight, he said. At the May Health
Assembly, members agreed to remove the WHO from the list of
stakeholders for a proposed biomedical treaty on R&D against the
earlier protestations of some developing countries.

The right to health is also sometimes erroneously equated with the
right to health care, Burci said, which is not a popular idea in some
influential countries at WHO.

New R&D Treaty or Stick with TRIPS?

Research and development has always been an =93awful challenge,=94 said
Carole Presern of the GAVI Alliance, a public-private partnership
focussed on global health issues. It is necessary to be =93more serious
about how it is to be funded and the incentive mechanisms around it.=94

But Presern asked whether a new treaty would solve the problem.
Debates over a proposed R&D treaty temporarily stalled negotiations
during the world health assembly, as WHO=92s role in such a negotiation
was questioned (IPW, WHO, 21 May 2009).

=93It is clear that we have a lot more ease creating treaties that
restrict access,=94 said Tido von Schoen-Angerer, executive director of
the Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines at M=E9decins Sans
Fronti=E8res (MSF). =93TRIPS is the current R&D treaty. We=92re going to
have an anti-counterfeit treaty that has potential implications.=94 It
will be =93harder to get one that ensures access.=94

But ensuring access is particularly critical now, said Schoen-Angerer.

A cost explosion could be on the horizon for drug procurement
agencies, he said. Now that India has implemented the World Trade
Organization Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
(TRIPS) Agreement, it is unclear where the next generation of drugs -
and generic counterparts - will come from.

The current crisis with multiple-drug resistant tuberculosis - complex
and difficult to treat - is a case in point. This was =93a foreseeable
crisis,=94 said Schoen-Angerer. =93The background to the current situation
is decades of R&D neglect because there was no market=94 for those
medications.

There is a unique opportunity now with an expert working group under
the auspices of WHO currently tasked with finding innovative R&D
financing plans, he added.

The expert working group was one of the key outcomes of the WHO global
strategy and plan of action, and will hold its second meeting since
its May 2008 mandate, from 29 June to 1 July, according to sources.
The topic of an R&D treaty might come up in the context of the working
group.

=93If WHO should be a negotiating forum for an R&D treaty I can=92t say
but I could see it being split open by a political debate for years
and years,=94 said Burci.

There was a lot of resistance to the treaty, said Burci, who
speculated that the reluctance from developed countries came from
worry about regulation in an area which has until now been left to
market rules. Such rules, he added, do not work well for neglected
diseases.

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

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org


Tel: +41 22 791 6727
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