On Wednesday, 24 January 2024, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) delivered the following statement on Universal Health Coverage.
In order to achieve universal health coverage with access to medicine for all, governments need to de-link the incentives to invest in R&D from the grant of temporary monopolies. We have decades of evidence that monopolies on medical technologies lead to restrictions on access and inequality of access.
Society values innovation and investments in R&D for advances in biomedical technologies, but also access.
It is possible to progressively implement alternative incentives for investments in R&D that do not rely on granting exclusionary monopolies and high prices that create inequality and undermine prevention.
The WHO can lead by convening a working group on the progressive delinkage of R&D incentives from legal monopolies and high prices.