At the WIPO Conference on Intellectual Property and Public Policy Issues today, Margaret Chan, the Director General of the World Health Organization, made the following speech at WIPO’s Conference on Intellectual Property and Public Policy Issues on the topic of “Strengthening Multilateral Cooperation on IP and Public Health” where she shared the limelight with Pascal Lamy, Director General of the World Trade Organization.
Dr. Chan called the WHO Global Strategy and Plan of Action emanating from the WHO Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property as a “triumph for public health” because it “demonstrates that the forces that govern the development and pricing of medical products can indeed be steered in directions that favour more equitable access to medicines”.
She made the curious assertion that during the IGWG process,
some in civil society had a radical proposal: abolish the current system of intellectual property and patent protection, and replace it with something inherently more responsive to health needs and concerns. As you know, this was not the solution eventually agreed upon. Instead, many imaginative strategies have been devised to circumvent the consequences of market failure for neglected populations and neglected diseases.
As examples of “new initiatives and new incentive schemes” to address market failure, Dr. Chan provided the examples of product development partnerships, the Global Fund, GAVI and the pre-qualification program in “finding pioneering solutions to a range of related problems”.
It is interesting that Global Fund, GAVI, PDPs and the pre-qualification program, institutions and programs, which all existed PRIOR to the passage of the WHO Global Strategy, are cited by the WHO Director General as the first fruits of the triumphant Global Strategy’s “new initiatives” and “new incentive schemes” to address market failure for neglected diseases and neglected populations. Dr. Chan did not mention the existence of the Expert Working Group on R&D financing which is tasked by the Member States of WHO to
examine current financing and coordination of research and development, as well as proposals for new and innovative sources of funding to stimulate research and development related to Type II and Type III diseases and the specific R&D needs of developing countries in relation to Type I diseases.
At the end of the session, the Ambassador of Senegal announced that Chan and Lamy could not take questions from the audience.