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Patents are often involved in public health policy discussions, and are considered by some as playing a major role in the escalating prices of new medicines, creating access issues. The World Intellectual Property Organization committee on patent law this week is discussing the issue and is holding information sessions by the Medicines Patent Pool, World Health Organization, and the World Trade Organization. Continue reading ->

By Catherine Saez

The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) announced today that MedsPaL, its database of information on the patent and licensing status of selected HIV, hepatitis C, and tuberculosis medicines, now extends to patented treatments on the World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines. New patents data include medicines for leukaemia, breast cancer and other cancer indications. Continue reading ->


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The first biosimilar of the blockbuster breast cancer drug trastuzumab is being prepared for launch in United States, following a decision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve it earlier this month. The product, Ogivri, has been created by a joint venture between US Mylan and Indian company Biocon. Continue reading ->


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What do investment, trade, intellectual property, health financing, R&D, industrial and medicines regulation policy have in common? They are all important building blocks for the successful promotion of local pharmaceutical manufacturing. As more and more countries are looking into building their own pharmaceutical production capacities, they need to ensure strong policy coherence to be successful. Continue reading ->


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A delegation of heads of biotechnology companies visited Geneva this month to present the International Confederation of Biotechnology Trade Associations (ICBA). The ICBA was created in 2012, but is now looking to make its voice heard in Geneva and inform policy discussions, and is finding it is not easy to become an observer in some organisations. They also underlined the importance of intellectual property for the biotech sector, in particular to attract indispensable capital. Continue reading ->


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The World Trade Organization General Council today agreed to a two-year extension for countries to adopt an amendment to the agency’s intellectual property agreement intended to help small economies get affordable medical products. But a decision on non-violation complaints will be left to the December WTO ministerial in Buenos Aires. Continue reading ->


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First published on the Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) blog. Reprinted with permission.

By Thiru Balasubramaniam

On Monday, 27 November 2017, the WHO published the recommendations of the overall programme review of the global strategy and plan of action on public, health innovation and intellectual property (EB142/14).  The full report of the overall programme review (OPR) will be published on Tuesday, 28 November 2017 [Note: the full report is now available here]. The mandate for this work is provided resolution WHA68.18 (2015) which requested the Director-General to establish a “panel of 18 experts” to conduct an OPR of the global strategy and plan of action on public health, innovation and intellectual property. (Source: EB142/14).  The composition of this expert panel can be found here:  http://www.who.int/medicines/innovation/gspa-review/members-list/en/

The expert panel provided 33 recommendations which included 17 forward looking ”high-priority actions” including on transparency and delinkage. Continue reading ->


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Published in SUNS #8580 dated 22 November 2017. Reprinted with permission from the Third World Network.

Geneva, 21 Nov (TWN) – A discussion document prepared by the Secretariat of the World Health Organization (WHO) proposes criteria to justify interventions with respect to medicines in transit.

This document is prepared for the 6th meeting of the Member State Mechanism (MSM) to be held from 28 November to 1 December at the WHO headquarters in Geneva. Continue reading ->


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NEW DELHI — Few topics in the global health agenda are as contentious as access to affordable medicines and medical care, and expectedly, divergent views permeated the discussions at a high-level conference in New Delhi, India last week. But if there is one thing that the three-day meet made amply clear, it was this: access to affordable healthcare has emerged as a global problem, and an emerging coalition of the like-minded, cutting across the developed and developing countries, is determined to have their voices heard in international policy circles on the issue. Continue reading ->