Report: WHO, WIPO, WTO – Promoting Access to Medical Technologies and Innovation: Intersections between Public Health, Intellectual Property and Trade

Extract from media release
For the first time, the three global intergovernmental bodies dealing with health, intellectual property and trade have pooled their expertise on a study of policies needed to advance medical and health technologies and to ensure they reach the people who need them. This report ‘demystifies an intricate and extremely complex landscape of laws and policies and makes them accessible to the non-specialist.’ WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan noted that the report “demystifies an intricate and extremely complex landscape of laws and policies and makes them accessible to the non-specialist. In so doing, it sets out a comprehensive and coherent inventory of legal instruments and policy options that can be drawn on to craft measures that meet national public health objectives.”…

The book looks at the need for international cooperation, who is involved, and how to address the challenges that the sector is facing. It examines in detail the range of policy issues from health and human rights and national, regional and global regulation policies, to intellectual property, trade and tariffs, procurement, free trade agreements and other aspects of policy. It studies a range of issues, such as: patents in the pharmaceutical sector; traditional medical knowledge; the importance of knowing what is patented and where, and how easy it is to find out; and questions of affordability and availability of medicines and market failure.

It looks in some depth at the development of medical technologies, modern research and development, ways of providing incentives for innovation, and ways of dealing with market failures, in particular with new products for treating neglected diseases. It includes comprehensive sections on trade and intellectual property rules and the flexibilities they contain for governments to meet various public health objectives.

See press release graphs and instructions on how to order the book
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Read a summary of the book
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http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2013/book_launch_20130205/en/index.html