The Most Common Misunderstanding about Compulsory Licensing
The belief that a country can only use compulsory licensing in cases of public health emergencies is a myth that has proven difficult to...
Dutch Minister of Health writes open letter to pharma, threatens to name and shame
"Dear Pharma," writes the Dutch Minister of Health, Bruno Bruins in an open letter in the daily newspaper the Volkskrant, "Last week two messages jumped...
“This week, the medicines were not there”: What is at stake in the pandemic...
Earlier this week I listened to a testimony from a community worker at a maternity ward where HIV-positive women gave birth. 17 babies were...
How not to solve a crisis: The European Commission’s Plan for Transferable Data Exclusivity...
Drug-resistant infections, sometimes called “superbugs,” killed an estimated 1.27 million people in 2019, a number set to rise to 50 million by 2050. It is...
Legal tools that lower medicines prices have expanded access to medicines for over two...
LONDON, UK: Millions of people are priced out of access to life-saving medicines. Use of legal tools to reduce prices has been under-reported and...
The Power of TRIPS Flexibilities in Medicines Procurement
The government of Malaysia has began to roll out treatment of people infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV). Treatment will be a combination of...
The European Commission’s compulsory licensing proposals are sensible but do not go far enough
An earlier version of this comment was published in Barron's on 21 July 2023. A Spanish translation of it is also available from El...
Pharmaceutical Pricing Hostages
Ireland seems to be the stage of some of the most bizarre pharmaceutical company behaviour these days. This month, the pharmaceutical company CSL Behring...
Cystic Fibrosis Buyers Club Shows the UK Government The Way
The move by a group of parents of children with cystic fibrosis (CF) to set up a buyers club to gain access to treatments...
WHO is an essential forum for debates on intellectual property and public health
Recently, Health Policy Watch reported that some European countries at the World Health Organization (WHO) Pandemic Agreement negotiations maintain that intellectual property negotiations belong...