Humiragate: AbbVie’s desperate attempts to keep its monopoly
A new front has opened in the war against Abbvie's efforts to sustain and secure its Humira market monopoly. This time in The Netherlands...
“The diseases were in the South and the drugs were in the North”: Ellen...
Ellen 't Hoen discusses the HIV epidemic in the 90's, which hit sub-Saharan Africa particularly hard, and was exacerbated by the lack of availability...
Never say never – Why the High Income Countries that opted-out from the Art....
To limit the ability of patent owners to charge excessive prices for patented medicines, countries can grant compulsory licences which permit others to produce...
Drug Price Transparency Calls Move from South Africa to World Health Assembly
by Katrina Perehudoff and Jennifer Sellin
Over 30 states and 40 business and civil society groups debated strategies for affordable and sustainable medicines prices at...
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....
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...
With technology transfer, 120 companies in low- and middle-income countries could manufacture mRNA vaccines
Recent reporting from the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has revealed efforts by BioNTech – the technology firm behind Pfizer’s projected $100 billion in Covid-19...
BMJ Commentary: Overriding drug and medical technology patents for pandemic recovery: a legitimate move...
Interest in the use of compulsory licensing is making a comeback in high-income countries in response to concerns about access to Covid-19 vaccines and...
Cystic Fibrosis Buyers Club Shows the UK Government The Way
The move by a group of parents of children with cystic fibrosis (CF) to set up a buyers club to gain access to treatments...
Covid-19 and the comeback of compulsory licensing
The Covid-19 outbreak raises many questions, including some we can answer using experiences gained in previous disease outbreaks. Here is one: how to deal...