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...
The Waiver that Wasn’t: Is the pharma lobby responsible?
Systemic lobbying pressure from pharmaceutical companies – allegedly attached to threats to withdraw investments – may have been responsible for the watering down of...
TRIPS, technology transfer and access to pandemic countermeasures: What the WHOÂ Pandemic Treaty must...
The scrambling for access to Covid-19 vaccines by developing countries has reignited the debate on the WTO Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)...
Seven recommendations for sharing intellectual property, know-how and technology – report of Global Expert...
Negotiators of a Pandemic Treaty should heed the recommendations, published 15 July in the BMJ Global Health, to design a fair global system for...
The US NIH will share technology with WHO to fight the pandemic
The US National Institutes of Health today committed to sharing several technologies with a World Health Organization body tasked with increasing access to Covid-19...
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...
Medicines Patent Pool signs first Covid-19 licence agreement with Merck Sharp & Dohme. Others...
The Medicines Patent Pool, a UN-backed organisation whose mission is to expand access to essential medicines around the world, today announced its first agreement...
Lessons for a pandemic preparedness treaty from previous successes and failures with treaty-based technology...
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1. Introduction
Scaling-up production of new vaccines to provide many billions of doses on a time-scale...
The EU proposed Covid waivers of certain TRIPS rules are mostly meaningless
Since October 2020, discussions have been ongoing at the World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council about a waiver of...
WHO’s Essential Medicines Committee takes aim at rising prices, adds new treatments for cancer...
On 1 October, the World Health Organization published its latest Model List of Essential Medicines (EML) and Essential Medicines for Children (EMLc). Updated roughly...