By Elise De Geyter for Intellectual Property Watch

The World Health Organization today published an item entitled, Access to medicines: making market forces serve the poor, a chapter from its report ‘Ten years in public health 2007-2017’ of outgoing WHO Director General Margaret Chan.

The chapter reveals that almost two billion people worldwide have no access to essential medicines, and says this lack of access to medicines is a complex problem that prevents better health. The chapter investigates the role of WHO in addressing the problem of access to safe, effective and quality-assured medicines.

The chapter mentions that WHO together with its partners have launched several initiatives to let market forces serve the interests of the poor since the landmark 2008 agreement on the Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property. The WHO prequalification programme is a WHO initiative that has become an established mechanism to improve access to medicines. The programme has increased supplies and decreased prices of medicines by allowing smaller manufacturers of quality products to compete on an equal footing with multinational companies.