According to the Financial Times, the WHO will “….start talks on a global plan of action for research on priority health needs in developing countries. The WHO will hope to encourage development of medicines neglected by private industry.
The WHOâs 192 member states approved a consensus resolution on Saturday establishing an intergovernmental working party to come up with a strategy and action plan within two years…..
The Calling the move a âbreakthroughâ, Médecins Sans Frontières, the medical humanitarian group, said it would ensure that patientsâ needs rather than profits drove innovation.
The WHO accord followed what health officials called a âmiraculousâ change of tack by the US, which had previously indicated strong opposition to any steps that might imply a weakening or sidestepping of the drug patenting system.
In return, developing countries led by Brazil and Kenya dropped demands for a binding research and development framework and explicit support for âopen accessâ and other models of promoting health research outside the patent system.
The global strategy will implement the recommendations of a report to the WHO last month by an independent commission..”
Translation: Jamie Love’s effort to impose a Soviet style R&D planning bureau funded by a global tas on countries has been destroyed. The framework for the future will be the report of the Commission on Intellectual Property and Public Health which has no mention of Jamie Love and his beloved R&D treaty….
His approach would have suffocated and stifled efforts to transfer technology to produce vaccines and drugs to developing countries and mired efforts to innovate in politics and bureaucratic infighting. I believe the current patent system is not suited to promoting the development of drugs for neglected disease just as it was not suited to promoting orphan drug development 25 years ago…..and we need to come up with a way to shift production and pricing to developing countries more quickly….but the Stalinist model promoted by Love would make it impossible…thank goodness the WHO is moving in a dramatically different direction, which including rejecting the R&D treaty.
