UN needs to look beyond patents for improving access to medicines

This was originally published on Devex on August 4, 2016.

The lack of access to medicine has become a regular feature of the health landscape in many developing countries. In the West African country where I’ve been spending time lately, stockouts of essential medicines happen regularly, not only in the public sector (where you might expect it) but also in projects well-funded by donors (where you might not).

The World Health Organization estimates that availability of selected generic medicines was only 38 percent and 46 percent in the public sector in low- and middle-income countries, respectively, and a full three-quarters of the world’s population (around 5.5 billion) have no access to proper pain relief.

Earlier this year, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed a High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines to assess this problem and come up with some solutions. Specifically, the purpose of the panel was “to review and assess proposals and recommended solutions for remedying the policy incoherence between the justifiable rights of inventors, international human rights law, trade rules and public health in the context of health technologies.”

But leaks from the panel’s highly secretive proceedings suggest that the secretary-general told the panel to focus on intellectual property and patents to the exclusion of other issues that hamper access to medicine — weak health systems, questionable government policies, a lack of health workers and a lack of resources.

Controversy brewing over the greatest barriers to access to medicine

A worker selects medicine from the MEDS (Mission for Essential Drugs and Supplies) warehouse in Nairobi. MEDS is jointly owned by the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Christian Health Association of Kenya. Photo: Bedad Mwengi

This was originally published on Global Health TV on July 16, 2016.

In comments last week at the International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said four things deserved credit for getting the AIDS pandemic under control — people living with HIV, biomedical companies, generic medicines and international finance.

But despite his gratitude to biomedical companies and generic medicines, the secretary-general is overseeing a process that threatens to undermine those companies' ability to improve access to medicine in developing countries.

The World Health Organization says an estimated 2 billion people (27% of the world’s population of 7.5 billion) lack access to essential medicine, most of them in Africa and Asia, but a full three-quarters of the world’s population (around 5.5 billion) have no access to proper pain relief treatment.

To address this staggering problem, the Secretary-General set up a High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines earlier this year. The purpose of the panel was “to review and assess proposals and recommended solutions for remedying the policy incoherence between the justifiable rights of inventors, international human rights law, trade rules and public health in the context of health technologies.”

Sounds like a great and noble idea, right? But some expert commentators say the panel is on track to do more harm than good because of its terms of reference.