A small, diverse group of [World Health Organization] member states meeting informally over the weekend were able to resolve questions of which institutions should be actors in a broader plan of action for the implementation of the World Health Organization Global Strategy on Public Health, Innovation, and Intellectual Property, according to sources. The informal agreement increases the likelihood of consensus when the document is discussed at the WHO Executive Board meeting this week, they said.
The informal meeting immediately proceeded the Executive Board (EB) meeting, which advises and makes recommendations to the WHO’s decision-making body, the annual World Health Assembly (WHA) in May. The EB is taking place between 19 and 27 January.
The global strategy was the endpoint of a series of discussions and working groups begun in 2003, when WHO first began to explore the relationship between public health and innovation, in particular innovation on medical products related to diseases that disproportionately affect the developing world. Intellectual property protection, and its influence as an incentive for innovation and in determining prices of medical products, was necessarily a key component of the discussions and the final strategy.
The plan of action was not finalised at the close of the WHA in May 2008, and the WHO Director General was tasked with finishing several unfinished components, in particular indicators of progress for the strategy’s implementation, funding needs, and relevant stakeholders. The plan matches specific actions with stakeholder groups meant to carry them out. ...
[A key decision made at the informal meeting] was the removal of the WHO from a separate list of stakeholders in exploratory discussions on instruments or mechanisms for essential health and biomedical research and development, including a possible treaty on those issues. The agreed stakeholders for the possible treaty are interested governments, and other relevant organisations including NGOs. ...
The informal group meeting included, according to sources, representatives from Brazil, Canada, Chile, the EU, Norway, Thailand and the United States, with India and the African Group apparently unable to attend. ...
Comment. To be clear, nothing official was decided this week. But the idea is for influential member states to line up in advance, preparing the way for official agreement. We should hear this week or next if the Executive Board follows.
OA for publicly-funded research was part of the discussions for a R&D treaty. See also our past posts on the R&D treaty.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 1/21/2009 10:17:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
