Blog

The latest thoughts from Medicines Law & Policy partners.

Wrapping up 2024: Noteworthy events in medicines law and policy around the globe

Welcome to Medicines Law & Policy’s  end of the year blog, our highly biased annual overview of memorable medicines law and policy events. January At the...

Why The Request By Least Developed Countries For An Extension Of The Transitional Period...

On 24 February 2015 Bangladesh on behalf of the 34 Least Developed Country members (LDCs) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) submitted a request...
Fireworks

Wrapping up 2022 with some noteworthy medicines, law and policy events

Welcome to our annual, highly biased, overview of noteworthy events in the field of medicines law and policy. Also in 2022, Covid-19 remained a central...

Lessons for a pandemic preparedness treaty from previous successes and failures with treaty-based technology...

This post can also be downloaded as a PDF here. 1.      Introduction Scaling-up production of new vaccines to provide many billions of doses on a time-scale...

Imagine if health and trade ministers would meet in one room this week

A earlier version of this commentary was published on 28 November 2021 by Barron's. This is a time of missed opportunities. This week, trade ministers...

Dolutegravir Patent Licences Can Provide Access To All

This year the World Health Organization (WHO) added dolutegravir, an antiretroviral medicine for the treatment of HIV infection, to its Model List of Essential...

The European Commission says Covid-19 vaccines should be global public goods, but do their...

The European Commission has entered into advance purchase agreements (APAs) for Covid-19 vaccines with six pharmaceutical companies and is concluding negotiations with two companies....

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...

Fair Medicines Pricing requires addressing monopolies and increasing transparency in pharmaceutical markets

The 4th WHO Fair Pricing Forum took place from 6 - 8 February 2024. Ellen 't Hoen spoke at the opening plenary. Below are...

Gilead’s sofosbuvir patent in India – options for global access to new hepatitis C...

Earlier this month the US pharmaceutical company Gilead obtained a patent in India for sofosbuvir, part of a treatment of hepatitis C that became...