Brief

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...

How the ‘Oxford’ Covid-19 vaccine became the ‘AstraZeneca’ Covid-19 vaccine

The ‘Oxford / AstraZeneca’ vaccine is one of the world’s leading hopes in the race to end the Covid-19 pandemic. Its history is not...

What is the ‘know-how gap’ problem and how might it impact scaling up production...

This entire article is also available as a PDF by clicking here. 1. Introduction. How relevant are concerns about intellectual property rights causing problems for...

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 last mile: A few suggestions for the WHO Pandemic Agreement’s last two weeks...

This technical briefing note is also available as a PDF here. On 16 April, the Bureau of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) to draft and...

The European Parliament has now explicitly acknowledged the know-how problem too: time to include...

This technical briefing note is also available as a PDF here. We have been calling attention to the problem of sharing know-how necessary for the...

EU Review of Pharmaceutical Incentives: Recommendations for Change

In 2016, the European Council decided it was time for a review of the incentives that the EU provides to companies that develop new...

Current drafts of the WHO Pandemic Accord lack a provision for access to knowhow/trade...

Negotiations are currently taking place at the World Health Organization (WHO) to conclude a new pandemic agreement by May 2024. The objective of the...

Sharing know-how/trade secrets during a pandemic: We must be planning for it now

Medicines Law & Policy has recently proposed a provision for inclusion in the draft WHO  pandemic instrument currently being discussed in Geneva (here and...

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...