High-level Commission calls on WHO to act on medicines access for poor nations

An independent Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public Health, presented its report to the World Health Organization on April 3, recommending key actions needed to ensure that poor people in developing countries have access to existing and new products to diagnose, treat and prevent the diseases which affect them most.

Over half the people in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia lack regular access to existing essential medicines because they cannot afford them, or because the health system in their country is too weak, the Commission points out. Apart from access to existing medicines, some health products specifically for diseases which disproportionately affect developing countries are simply not developed at all due to the lack of a sustainable market, it says, adding that the relationship between intellectual property rights, innovation and public health has been at the heart of debate on these issues.

The report of the Commission, entitled Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights, is the result of two years' analysis of how governments, industry, scientists, international law and financing mechanisms can work best to overcome the challenges.