On Tuesday’s discussion at the 128th Executive Board on the Draft WHO HIV/AIDS strategy 2011–2015, the United States made a strong intervention (delivered by Dr. Nils Daulaire, Director, Office of Global Health Affairs, Department of Health and Human Services) in support of the Medicines Patent Pool drawing attention to the fact that the draft HIV/AIDS strategy while making reference to a more competitive market for ARVs, failed to recognized the importance of the Medicines Patent Pool.
Here below are the remarks of the US on this point:
Finally, but importantly, the Strategy makes several references to the need to foster an open competitive market for ARVs to contain ARV costs, but does not recognize the importance of voluntary licenses and the Medicines Patent Pool as key opportunities for ensuring that that happens. The Strategy does encourage the use of differential pricing for patent protected medicines to ensure affordable access, but recent studies have demonstrated that differential pricing does not always have the impact on the pricing of medicines that robust generic competition does. The Medicines Patent Pool aims to enhance competition to bring down the prices in developing countries, which the strategy advocates. The Pool can also encourage needed new innovation, especially to help treat children and create fixed-dose combinations necessary to scaling up and improving HIV treatment in resource poor settings. The initial license from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to the Medicines Patent Pool announced in September was an important first step, but to succeed it is critical to have more companies joining the Pool to scale up HIV treatment.