[Ip-health] Fwd: WHO: Battle lines drawn

[david@davidhammerstein.org]

http://www.davidhammerstein.com/article-eu-and-us-block-moves-for-greater-a=
ccess-to-essential-medicines-for-world-s-poor-1--43355288.html


     The battle lines have been drawn at the World Health Organization
this week in Geneva. On one side many countries from the South, led by
Brazil, India and Bolivia supported by NGOs, are pushing for changes
to guarantee much greater access to essential medicines for the
world=B4s poor.  On the other side the European Union, under the Spanish
Presidency, and the US, are ignoring the demands for access to
medicine and are overtly blocking any progress at the WHO to assure
affordable prices or technology transfer of life-saving drugs of
neglected diseases.

    This confrontation took place at the Executive Board of the WHO
that met this week to study the report of the Expert Working Group on
the financing of  R and D for essential medicines.  The tone of the
debate was especially hot due to accusations that the expert report
had been manipulated and heavily lobbied by large pharmaceutical
interests that had enjoyed privileged access to internal documents and
to the members of the expert panel.

   It was considered scandalous by many observers that after months of
work the expert panel had totally ignored the proposals of countries
from the South to de-link R and D costs from medicine pricing, to
study prize innovation schemes, to promote technology transfer to the
South and to initiate new intellectual property strategies including
patent pools to both bring down radically the price of the most drugs
and to boost research into neglected diseases.  As reflected by leaks
the Expert Working Group had faithfully  followed the instructions of
the Pharmaceutical lobby=B4s organization IFPMA. According to notes by
industry lobbyists accompanying the leaks of confidential internal WHO
documents "the report is totally fair to industry" and ?the overall
result [of the working group?s report] is in line with most of the
industry positions on this matter,? but states as well that ?there is
still room for them to introduce new language?.

   While Brazil, India, Bolivia and Thailand voiced serious concern and
even successfully demanded an internal investigation into the lack of
credibility of the process, the European Union, the US and others
voiced no objections to the report and even tried to prevent an
open-ended review of its content. The disturbing contradiction is that
while no one denies that the present medicine market excludes nearly
half of the worlds population, the EU refuses to accept any serious
discussion of changes in the status quo of the intellectual property
regime concerning essential medicines that could save millions of
lives.  Upon being pressed by the representative of the Transatlantic
Consumer Dialogue (TACD) at a WHO side meeting organized by the EU
under the Spanish Presidency,   European Commission representatives
from the DG Sanco and from DG Research refused to clarify the EU
position on access to medicine nor to explain why they rejected the
proposals of Southern countries and NGOs such as Medicin sans Frontier
and Health Action International.  Privately, and on a related issue,
a high-level Spanish official admitted that the EU was going too far
in trying to force Latin American countries into very restrictive IP
chapters of bilateral Free Trade Agreement.

    While the EU verbally supports the global health objectives of the
UN=B4s Millennium Objectives and devotes important economic resources to
that objective,  its political actions at international forums such as
the WHO to date seem to reflect a staunch defense of "business as
usual" or the interests of large industrial lobbies. This
contradictory EU position on access to medicine surely deserves more
attention and scrutiny by the European Parliament and by European
public opinion.

David Hammerstein, Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue

   For detailed analysis see keionline.org




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