Ms Childs, Ms Hoen and Mr Otwoma provided an overview of the coming treatment crisis faced by people living with HIV, especially in low and middle-income countries:
More people living with HIV in developing countries are not able to receive treatment because of the increasing treatment costs.
When drug resistance occurs, they need access to newer treatments. However, most of the newest HIV medicines are patented in key generics producing countries, such as India.
The patenting of new medicines increase treatment costs, and could become unaffordable.
Mr Otwoma highlighted the importance of reaching a compromise between patients and R&D industries. The four panellists discussed the solutions to this coming treatment crisis in the changing intellectual property (IP) landscape. In general, the four panellists agreed that patent/IP systems could act as a barrier to affordable access to medicines and that generics competition does help reduce the prices of medicines based on their past experiences.
Regarding the solutions, Ms Hoen presented the operation of the medicines patent pool while indicating its limitations: the pool operates on a voluntary basis, the pool only focuses on HIV/AIDS medicines, and the pool has certain geographical scope. Professor Correa introduced some other options, including the effective application of patentability standards in developing countries, the use of compulsory licenses and government use, and new innovation mechanisms in pharmaceutical industries.
Mr Peter Beyer from the World Health Organization (WHO) updated the audience about recent developments in the WHO, and cooperation between three international agencies: WTO, WIPO and WHO on the issue of intellectual property and public health. He expressed WHO’s support to the work of the medicines patent pool but since the medicines patent pool is based on voluntary licences, he indicated that it is important for WHO members to look at other options.
The Q&A session included a question about the implication of the inclusion of the TRIPS plus provisions in the RTA/FTAs for developing countries. Both Ms Childs and Professor Correa indicated that developing countries should be warned strongly not to accept the TRIPS plus provisions in their FTA negotiations as they were not aware of benefits or empirical evidence. Mr Beyer indicated that the WHO always recommends its members to make an assessment of the impact before accepting the TRIPS plus provisions.
WTO PUBLIC FORUM: 19—21 SEPTEMBER 2011
Averting the coming treatment crisis in a changing intellectual property landscape
Special Correspondent - 2011-09-21 06:28
A session was organized during WTO PUBLIC FORUM: 19—21 SEPTEMBER 2011 by Medicines Patent Pool and moderated by Mr Antony Taubman, Director of Intellectual Property Division of WTO. The four panellists were: Ms Michelle Childs, Director of Policy and Advocacy, MSF; Professor Carlos Correa, University of Buenos Aires; Mr Nelson Otwoma, National Coordinator/CEO, National Empowerment Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS in Kenya; and Ms Ellen T Hoen, Executive Director, Medicines Patent Pool.