WHA70: Statement of Knowledge Ecology International on antimicrobial resistance

KEI would like to call attention to a proposal introduced in the United States Congress, as Senate Bill 771, sponsored by 16 US Senators, and HR 1776, which has 14 sponsors in the House of Representatives.

SEC. 409K of the bill is titled, “PRIZE FUND FOR NEW AND MORE EFFECTIVE TREATMENTS OF BACTERIAL INFECTIONS.”

The bill would create a $2 billion cash reward for the development of up to three new antibiotic drugs. $100 million of the prize fund would be devoted to the “open source dividend,” to reward researchers and companies to openly shared knowledge, data, materials and technologies that contributed the development of new products.

There is full delinkage of R&D costs from product prices, and requirements for either open licensing of patents and other IP, or a regulated price on the drugs.

We believe this proposal is a model that can be used for market entry rewards for AMR, and one that could be scaled as a collaboration among governments seeking to advance the development of new drugs, and to implement delinkage of R&D costs from product prices.

We believe the full delinkage approach makes the stewardship of the new drugs more manageable.

You can read more about these bills at the website, DELINKAGE.ORG