On Tuesday February 3, 2015, the final day of the 136th WHO Executive Board meeting, the EB passed a draft decision on the Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation, and Intellectual Property (GSPoA). The draft decision recommends to the WHA that the GSPOA be extended until 2022. The draft decision was initially proposed by Argentina, Brazil, India, and South Africa with Ecuador later joining to co-sponsorship. The initial proposal can be found here (EB136/CONF./7, dated 27 January 2015). For KEI’s coverage of the initial proposal, visit /node/2161.
During the official discussion of the GSPOA during the Friday January 31st session of the EB, the US spoke in support of extending the GSPOA mandate, but alluded to edits that it would prefer to have included (while not specifying the content of its preferred edits). Sources informed KEI that the US counterproposal included language further elaborating on the types of diseases covered by the GSPOA draft decision. If that language made it in the final text, it might have had the effect of limiting the scope of diseases covered by the GSPOA and possible future treaties.
The final agreed upon draft decision did not include the limiting language from the counter proposal but contained further elaboration on the evaluation and review of the GSPOA to be carried out by 2018. The full text of the final draft decision follows:
EXECUTIVE BOARD EB136/CONF./7
136th session 3 February 2015
Agenda item 10.5Global strategy and plan of action on public health, innovation and intellectual property
Draft decision proposed by Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, India and South Africa
The Executive Board,
Having considered the report on Evaluation of the global strategy and plan of action on public health, innovation and intellectual property, decided the following:
(1) to recommend to the Sixty-eighth World Health Assembly to extend the deadline of the overall programme review of the global strategy and plan of action on public health, innovation and intellectual property on its achievements, remaining challenges and recommendations on the way forward to 2018, recognizing it was not presented in 2015, as requested by resolution WHA62.16;
(2) to recommend to the Sixty-eighth World Health Assembly to extend the time frame of the plan of action on public health, innovation and intellectual property until 2022;
(3) to request the Director-General to provide a report for the Sixty-eighth World Health Assembly on options, in consultation and with the involvement of Member States, for the conduct of the comprehensive evaluation and the overall programme review of the global strategy and plan of action on public health innovation and intellectual property, on its achievements, remaining challenges and recommendations on the way forward, including whether to combine the two instruments, sequencing, terms of reference, timing and options for establishing an evaluation management group with the goal of completing this exercise by 2018.