Blog

The latest thoughts from Medicines Law & Policy partners.

INB co-chairs, Precious Matsoso from South Africa and Roland Driece from the Netherlands opening the session on 18 June

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...

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...

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...

Vaccine knowledge needs to be a global public good: Remarks to the World Trade...

Ellen ‘t Hoen, Medicines Law & Policy, at the World Trade Organization-World Health Organization High-Level Dialogue on Expanding COVID-19 Vaccine Manufacturing to Promote Equitable...

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...

Ensuring that intellectual property rights aren’t a barrier to scaling-up: the remarkable example of...

This week various international bodies are tackling different challenges in meeting the urgent problem of scaling-up manufacture of and access to vaccines for Covid-19....