Strong call for transparency on medicine prices, cost of R&D at WHO Fair Pricing...
“Medical innovation has little social value if most people cannot access its benefits…. this is a global human rights issue,” said Mariângela Simão, Assistant...
WHO Fair Pricing Forum: Watching for Drug Industry Accountability
by Katrina Perehudoff and Jennifer Sellin
Expensive medicines are a ubiquitous challenge from which no government is immune. Excessive price hikes are an urgent human...
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...
Faced with unreasonable medicines prices, the Netherlands introduces pharmacy exemption in patent law.
On 1 February 2019, article 53(3), second sentence of the Dutch Patent Act 1995 came into force introducing a patent exemption for the preparation...
Cystic Fibrosis Medicines Wars in Europe
Monday 4 February, the UK parliament will debate the issuing of a compulsory licence by the government, called ‘Crown use’, for the cystic fibrosis...
Cancer Drug Pricing on the World Health Organization’s Executive Board Agenda
On Thursday 24 January, the World Health Organization’s 144th Executive Board meeting will kick off in Geneva. One of the agenda items is access...
Time to put a stop to the abuse of orphan drug regulation- the latest...
Today, the Dutch Medical Journal (Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde) reported on the case of lutetium-octreotaat, a cancer drug developed by researchers in the Dutch...
2018 Round-up of Noteworthy Medicines Law and Policy Events
We are reaching the end of 2018: Time for our end-of-the-year roundup of some significant developments in medicines law and policy.
January
The Chilean parliament started...
Are gene-editing therapies patentable? A WIPO side event investigates.
On 6 December, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) organised an interesting panel on the patentability of new gene- and cell-based medical therapies, as a side...
Will the European Court of Justice put a stop to the evergreening of Truvada...
Truvada, the fixed-dose combination of tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) and emtricitabine (FTC) is a critical medicine in both HIV treatment and prevention. It is...