[Ip-health] Statement of Thailand to EB 126 (Jan 2010) on public health, innovation and intellectual property

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://keionline.org/node/765


Statement of Thailand to EB 126 (Jan 2010) on public health,
innovation and intellectual property
By thiru
Created 22 Jan 2010 - 1:17am

The following statement was delivered by Thailand on Tuesday, 19
January 2010 during the discussion of agenda item 4.3 on public
health, innovation and intellectual property. This statement requested
Dr. Chan (Director-General, WHO) to conduct an investigation of the
leaks of documents of the WHO Expert Working Group on R&D Financing to
the IFPMA. In its statement, Thailand noted that the circle of trust
had been broken.

"Mr. Chairman,

I thank Madame DG to her explanation about the process and
documentations including her constructive advices

We welcome and appreciate the hard work of the Expert working group
for more than 2 years.

Anyway, we Thailand would like to express our some degree of
disappointment with the progress in the process so far, on the two
following issues.

Firstly, the timeliness of the process, the 126th Executive Board
Members are supposed to considered the full report, not the Executive
Summary. This road map has been clearly defined two years ago, long
enough to have better management than this. However, what we have
studied is the Executive Summary. The full final report was just
distributed two days ago, yet called the Executive Board Members to
adopt this 86 pages report. This is not far from signature on the
blank check situation. So we strongly support Brazil, India and
Bolivia=92s proposal to set up an informal open-ended consultation to
discuss the EWG report before the WHA.

Secondly, we are disappointed with the working process of the Expert
Working Group. We are not very confident that the IP issue, which
should be vital issue for the Working Group, has been extensively and
adequately discussed including the delinking cost of R&D from price of
product. Furthermore Mr. Chairman we are unhappy with the issue of the
transparency. There has been report on the Lancet. This is of course
beyond the circle of trust we have in this Working Group. Therefore we
would like to request The Director General through you, Mr Chair, to
set up the investigation regarding the leaking of Report.

Thank you Mr. Chair"


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


Tel: +41 22 791 6727
Mobile: +41 76 508 0997