Should Access to Medicines and TRIPS Flexibilities Be Limited to Specific Diseases?

Abstract

The health needs of most of the world's population are not well served by patent-based pharmaceutical markets. The poor in low- and medium-income countries (LMICs) lack the financial resources to sustain the attention of global commercial drug companies. After an extensive consultation process, in 2006, the World Health Organization's Commission on Innovation, Intellectual Property and Public Health issued its Report (the WHO CIPIH Report), finding this concern to be significant:In the context of our work one of the important points is that, where the market has very limited purchasing power, as is the case for diseases affecting millions of poor people in developing countries, patents are not a relevant factor or effective in stimulating R&D and bringing new products to market.On this issue, the WHO CIPIH Report was preceded by the Access to Medicines movement, an informal coalition of civil society organizations such as Médecins Sans Frontières, Treatment Action Campaign, Health GAP, Oxfam, and Knowledge Ecology International (formerly the Consumer Project on Technology).