How ML&P is Aiding the Covid-19 Response

The Covid-19 pandemic underlined concerns about access to medicines and vaccines. How to ensure these products would be available rapidly and equitably quickly became the central question of those looking to bring the pandemic to its swiftest possible end, and to ensure the world is better prepared when (not if) the next pandemic arises.

ML&P experts have been helping to respond with explanations of policy options for governments and support for key global initiatives that will encourage and facilitate the sharing of intellectual property, know-how, and technology related to Covid-19 countermeasures. We have also provided input on actions the world must take to prepare for future pandemic threats. See below for ML&P insight, useful tools, and important initiatives ML&P is supporting. ML&P is also updating its TRIPS Flexibilities Database to include Covid-19 related instances.

Featured briefing papers on Covid-19

Commentary and news articles on Covid-19

Blogs

The European Commission’s proposal on a new EU-wide compulsory licensing regime

Guest author Olga Gurgula is a Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law at Brunel Law School, Brunel University London A recent international health emergency, the...

The European Commission’s compulsory licensing proposals are sensible but do not go far enough

An earlier version of this comment was published in Barron's on 21 July 2023. A Spanish translation of it is also available from El...

Submission to the US International Trade Commission

On 17 June 2022, World Trade Organization (WTO) Members adopted a Ministerial Decision outlining flexibilities in the WTO’s Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property...

New WHO-UNITAID briefing paper: Improving Access to Covid-19 Treatments

A new briefing paper based on Medicines Law & Policy research outlines the legal instruments available for countries seeking to access key therapeutics to...

ML&P’s Comments to the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) on the Zero Draft of the...

These remarks were delivered on the occasion of the fourth meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body to draft and negotiate a WHO convention, agreement...

Medicines price transparency: Ground still left to cover

Parts of this blog were previously published in the Lancet Regional Health Europe Secret medicines prices are hotly debated as European health systems struggle to...

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 WHO  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)...
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...

WTO Covid-19 TRIPS Decision: Some observations

This morning, 17 June at 5 AM the 12th World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference (MC12) approved a package of decisions and declarations. The...

ML&P in the News

Medicines Law & Policy experts have been present in the news over the last weeks, helping clarify what needs to happen to respond to COVID-19. A selection of articles is available below.

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ML&P tools and initiatives

Relevant ML&P Tools

COVID-19 has renewed interest in use of flexibilities in international law that can help governments increase access to medicines for their citizens. Our set of tools below can facilitate their use. For a flow chart that can help determine which tool is relevant to a particular country’s situation, see here.

Initiatives ML&P is supporting

Below are the important COVID-19 response initiatives that ML&P is committed to helping move forward.

Creation of a Covid-19 Technology Pool

Medical innovation is urgently needed to develop and produce tools to fight the pandemic; to facilitate this, the creation of a technology pool was proposed to the WHO by Costa Rica on 23 March. This mechanism would gather in one place and make available knowledge related to prevention, detection and treatment of Covid-19. It was endorsed on 27 March in an open letter to the WHO signed by nearly 100 public health organisations and experts, and since momentum has been growing.

On 3 April, the Board of the Medicines Patent Pool and UNITAID decided to expand MPP’s mandate to include health technology to support a Covid-19 response globally. And on 6 April WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he supported the proposal to create a pool and would work with Costa Rica to finalise details.

On 7 April, the Dutch Minister of Health offered to help WHO create the Covid-19 pool, and to help fund relevant research; in consultations on 3 April the Dutch Foreign Affairs Council noted that it was important to ensure developing countries could also access the data. An open pledge to in principle share Covid-19 related intellectual property was launched on 7 April. Also in April, the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Vaccinations for All wrote the prime minister urging him to support the Covid-19 pool as well as take other actions to secure open innovation on Covid-19 technologies.

Effective Use of Compulsory Licences for Export

Countries that lack the manufacturing capacity to produce a particular medicine can benefit from an amendment to the WTO’s TRIPS Agreement, Article 31bis, that allows medicines under a compulsory licence to be made for export (prior to this amendment, a CL had to serve the domestic market). However, 37 high income countries have opted out of using it to import medicines.

On 7 April 2020, Knowledge Ecology International published an open letter calling on these 37 countries to opt back in. In the age of Covid-19, this is critical for several reasons. First, in a public health crisis, even high income countries will need to diversify their supply base to ensure access to all who need medical technologies as urgently as it is needed. Secondly, the manufacture of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients – what makes a medicine effective – is increasingly outsourced to India and China, even when the final medicine is made elsewhere. This means these high income countries could face challenges in their ability to make a critical component domestically, which is what Article 31bis is designed to address. Third, having more countries willing to import on a CL can contribute to economies of scale that bring down prices for medical technology; thus, even if high income countries do not need to issue such CLs or their own use, doing so can help in countries where an affordable price is necessary to be able to treat their citizens.

Useful resources on Covid-19