This Wednesday 21 May 2014, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), Civil Society Coalition, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Oxfam, Health Action International (HAI) and Treatment Action Group (TAG) will host a side event at the WHA on, “Innovation and Access to Medicines and Vaccines: Emerging Challenges and Opportunities for Middle-Income Countries.”
Governments, patients and treatment providers in developing countries are facing rising prices of new medicines, vaccines and other essential medical technologies. Due to decades of pressure to ramp up intellectual property protection, multinational pharmaceutical companies’ increased interest in “emerging” markets, and the decreased availability of global health and development funding, governments that are considered “middle income economies” are seeing the cost of medical technologies they need to keep populations healthy skyrocketing. This is happening while both communicable and non-communicable diseases are affecting poor patients living in developing countries.
This event will consider many options to increase both innovation and access, including the use of TRIPS flexibilities, technology transfer to accelerate multi-source production, pooled procurement, health technology assessment, price controls and reference pricing are also widely applied cost-containment measures. It will also highlight that member States have also agreed to explore and promote a range of new incentive mechanisms that promote both innovation and access by de-linking the cost of R&D from the price of products and will examine the controversial strategy of tiered pricing notably promoted by the Global Fund to Fight AIDs, TB, and Malaria.
For background information on the topics to be discuss please see the attached document. See below for full logistical details:
When: Wednesday 21 May 2014 from 13:15-14:45
Where: Room XXVI, Palais des Nations, Avenue de la Paix 14, 1211 Geneve 10, Switzerland
Please RSVP to: Lara.Dovifat@berlin.MSF.org
For more information, please see the online flyer here.