Time for new pharmaceutical-innovation models

The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most profitable on earth, expected to be worth $1.4 trillion by the end of 2020. Last year,...

The Role of Activism in Shaping Law and Policies that Support Access to Medicines

This article is also available as a PDF here. Almost 26 years ago, here in Amsterdam, on November 25-26, 1999, Health Action International, Médecins Sans...

Wrapping up 2020 with some noteworthy medicines, law and policy events

Wrapping up the year 2020 can’t happen soon enough. This year, one way or the other, most people on the planet have been affected...

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...

Dutch Court Orders AstraZeneca to Pay Damages in Patent Evergreening Case

Today the Dutch court made a long-awaited ruling in the patent evergreening case of health insurance company Menzis versus AstraZeneca. It found that AstraZeneca...

Dutch Health Care Institute Says No to Medicines Pirate

It seems the Dutch health care system and health care professionals are fed up with the abuse of the orphan medicines regulation, which is...

Advanced Purchase Agreements for Covid-19 Vaccines: Do they ensure Global Public Good?

Advanced Purchase Agreements (APAs) were part of a strategy to provide upfront financing for Covid-19 vaccines and to accelerate their development and availability. Since...

The Urgency of Compulsory Licensing Provision for Transfer of Technology in the Pandemic Treaty:...

Guest blog by Ronald Eberhard The Intergovernmental Negotiating Body, established by the World Health Assembly, aims to draft a global pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response...

Time to put a stop to the abuse of orphan drug regulation- the latest...

Today, the Dutch Medical Journal (Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde) reported on the case of lutetium-octreotaat, a cancer drug developed by researchers in the Dutch...

World Trade Organization Members Embark on Review of the TRIPS Agreement

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council will meet on 10-11 July. On the agenda is the review...