At the 41st session (24 June 2019 – 12 July 2019) of the Human Rights Council, a bloc of countries known as the the Core Group (Brazil, China, Egypt, Indonesia, India, Senegal, South Africa and Thailand) have circulated a resolution… Continue Reading
On Monday, 24 June 2019, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) delivered this opening statement at WIPO’s 30th Session of the Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP). The Committee elected a new chair, Sarah Whitehead, United Kingdom of Great Britain… Continue Reading
(UPDATE: The NIH provided a response to our comments on June 18, 2019) On June 7, 2019, KEI and UACT submitted comments to the Federal Register notice 84 FR 23798, on the “Prospective Grant of an Exclusive Patent License: The… Continue Reading
Zolgensma, Novartis’s new $2.1 million gene therapy for children with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), is a remarkable breakthrough with a steep price tag: the cost per child is $2.125 million. The treatment was developed using research funded by the National… Continue Reading
KEI has a page on Charity and NIH funding related to Zolgensma, here: https://www.keionline.org/charity-nih-funding-related-to-zolgensma
Today the World Health Assembly (WHA) approved A72/A/CONF./2 Rev.1 as a resolution, titled “Improving the transparency of markets for medicines, vaccines, and other health products.” Link to the resolution: http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA72/A72_ACONF2Rev1-en.pdf When the text was made available, I sent out a… Continue Reading
One of the reasons why drug companies have fought so hard to block transparency of clinical trial costs is the growing gap between what the public had been told those costs are, and the actual costs, particularly for treatments for… Continue Reading
An earler version of this was posted to ip-health. —– As the #TransparencyResolution finally moves onto the #WHA72 agenda, I would like to offer a few comments on the process. We have copies of six versions of the negotiating text,… Continue Reading
On Thursday May 23, 2019, KEI, Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), and 44 more organizations and 10 individuals released an open letter to delegates of the 72nd World Health Assembly urging them to support a strong resolution on transparency… Continue Reading
The WHO has published A72/A/CONF./2, for Agenda item 11.7. The date of the document is 23 May 2019, but it is the end of day negotiating text from Wed, May 22. The title is: Improving the transparency of markets for… Continue Reading