WHO to debate report on improving poor nations' access to medicines
An independent Commission on Intellectual Property (IP) Rights, Innovation and Public Health has recommended key actions needed to ensure poor people in developing countries have better access to new medicines and disease treatments.
An independent Commission on Intellectual Property (IP) Rights, Innovation and Public Health has recommended key actions needed to ensure poor people in developing countries have better access to new medicines and disease treatments.
Over half of the people in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia lack regular access to essential medicines because they cannot afford them, or because the health system in their country is too weak. Often treatments for the diseases, which disproportionately affect developing countries, are simply not developed at all due to the lack of a sustainable market.
The report "Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights" is the result of two years' analysis of how governments, industry, scientists, international law and financing mechanisms can work best to overcome the challenges.
The report contains more than 50 recommendations, which serve as a road map for tackling the issues in different country settings. An intergovernmental working group of WHO's Executive Board will now consider the report at a meeting on 28 April and it willl be examined and debated by The World Health Assembly during its annual meeting from 22 - 27 May 2006. The Assembly will ultimately decide how the report findings will be applied.
Ruth Dreifuss, the chair of the Commission, said: "There is now global momentum to address these issues, and we have a unique opportunity to build on this. There is more awareness, more money potentially available, more utilization of scientific capacity in developing countries and new institutions such as public-private partnerships. The Commission report is clear that we must build on all of these to ensure that poor people in developing countries have sustainable access to the medicines, vaccines and diagnostics they need now, and critically, in the future. The report maps out the ways this can be don."
The report is available at: http://www.who.int/intellectualproperty/documents/thereport/en/