Health protection is non-negotiable in the AI Act negotiations A health-centric approach to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act is essential for the protection of health and fundamental rights of European citizens, write Hannah van Kolfschooten and Janneke van Oirschot. … HAI Admin 5 September 2022
HAI welcomes new Foundation Board Chair At the recent HAI Foundation Board meeting (June 24-25, 2022), we said farewell to Lander van Ommen, who completed two terms as Chair of the Foundation Board. We are incredibly… HAI Admin 22 August 2022
HAI and Partners Launch New SRH Project A new project, launched this week in Nairobi, sets out to improve the health and wellbeing of adolescents in the Great Lakes Region (Burundi, DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia),… HAI Admin 1 July 2022
Call for Action: High Time to Prioritise Health in the EU Artificial Intelligence Act 24 June 2022 | by Hannah van KOLFSCHOOTEN & Janneke van OIRSCHOT A first win for HAI in the AI Act negotiation process: Many amendments we proposed to make the AI… HAI Admin 24 June 2022
WTO institutionally unfit for the purpose of delivering sustainable solutions The 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) opened on 12 June, with the eyes of civil society focused on a number of key issues up for… HAI Admin 17 June 2022
Introducing the TRIPS Flexibilities Navigator Over the last year or so, we’ve been keeping you up-to-date with the development of a new tool to aid policymakers, advocates and others, including academics, to unlock the potential… HAI Admin 9 May 2022
Artificial Intelligence Act – A long awaited report surfaces In their long-awaited draft report, published on Friday 22 April, the European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) and Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) committees, led by… HAI Admin 26 April 2022
EU rushing WTO members to adopt weak waiver text In a letter to the European Commission, MEPs and Representatives to the World Trade Organization (WTO), a group of over 30 European and international civil society organisations today demanded the… HAI Admin 30 March 2022
HAI Statement on Tentative Agreement on TRIPS and COVID-19 Following reports that agreement has been reached on the proposal for a waiver on certain dispositions of the agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in relation… HAI Admin 16 March 2022
Marking International Women’s Day 2022 This year we mark International Women’s Day against a backdrop of great uncertainty for global security. As we prepared this blog, images of devastation and reports of continued shelling and… HAI Admin 8 March 2022
HAI is Hiring! Are you interested in joining a dynamic team dedicated to social justice and improving access to safe, effective, and affordable medicines for all people around the world? Health Action International… HAI Admin 28 February 2022
Risks and Harms from Health-related AI It is essential to protect citizens from the potential harms of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and realise their safety and accountability. That is why, in April 2021, the European Commission… HAI Admin 15 February 2022
Make good on access to medicine commitments HAI asks new Dutch Health Minister In a letter to the recently appointed Dutch Minister of Health, Wellbeing and Sport, Ernst Kuipers, Health Action International has commended his past comments on transparency and access to medicines,… HAI Admin 27 January 2022
Call for medical journals to support clinical trial transparency Six health groups, including Health Action International and TranspariMED, today call on medical journals to help patients, doctors and scientists to rapidly access data from recently completed clinical trials. In… HAI Admin 17 January 2022
Looking to 2022 with Renewed Energy It’s hard to believe that almost 12 months have passed since I wrote here ushering in HAI’s 40th anniversary year. In that piece I talked about the year of our… HAI Admin 21 December 2021
Transparency: Bringing the Issue to Life ‘Transparency’ is a term often used in access to medicines circles – typically thrown into a sentence with a couple of acronyms, with the assumption that our audiences know what… HAI Admin 21 December 2021
Working with the European Parliament 2021 has been another big year for the work of Health Action International (HAI) at the European Parliament. As co-hosts of the European Parliament Working Group on Access to Medicines… HAI Admin 15 December 2021
TRIPS Waiver: The Push Continues We were all set to go. Flights and hotels booked, lanyards packed, facemasks at the ready. Then came the announcement from the Director-General (DG) late on Friday night that the… HAI Admin 1 December 2021
Talking Medicine Pricing We recently published the report Medicine Pricing and Access in Europe and Beyond in which we examine issues related to medicine pricing and some of the actions already taken to address… HAI Admin 30 November 2021
WHO Recommends Malaria Vaccine for Use The World Health Organization (WHO) last week announced that it was recommending widespread use of the RTS,S malaria vaccine for children, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom… HAI Admin 13 October 2021
Over 9 million people living with type 1 diabetes A study published in Diabetologia, the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), estimates the prevalence of people living with type 1 diabetes to be over… HAI Admin 4 October 2021
European Commission’s State of the Union address: Reflection and Transparency Notable Absences Yesterday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivered her annual State of the Union address. The purpose of the speech is to reflect on the previous year and to set… HAI Admin 16 September 2021
A poster for change: HAI’s Snakebite First-aid poster is now available in Swahili It all started in 2018 with the idea of sharing our knowledge on snakebite first-aid with people living in snakebite endemic rural communities all over Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia. With… HAI Admin 6 August 2021
COVID-19: European Commission gives lacklustre response to legitimate civil society concerns Along with over 200 other civil society organisations, on 29th June we wrote to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. In our letter, we requested that the European Union… HAI Admin 20 July 2021
European Commission is offering no meaningful solutions for equitable access Over 200 civil society organisations from around the world have signed a letter the European Commission and EU Member States urging them to engage in text-based negotiations for a TRIPS… HAI Admin 29 June 2021
Clinical Trial Data and the Risk of Bias In 2018, HAI co-funded a study investigating the risk of bias in cancer drug trials submitted to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to inform the approval of the drugs for public use (Naci… HAI Admin 28 June 2021
Getting Hack to Reality In Autumn 2020, we promised we’d update you on the realisation of the winning idea of the Great Health Hack. But first a quick reminder of where we left off…. HAI Admin 8 June 2021
C-TAP has not (yet) lived up to high expectations One year ago, as the scale and gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic had become painfully clear, we looked to the launch of the COVID-19 Technologies Access Pool (C-TAP) with high… HAI Admin 28 May 2021
A Pandemic Response Lacking Moral Leadership In October 2020, eight months after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, India and South Africa submitted a proposal for a temporary waiver on certain articles of the World Trade Organization’s… HAI Admin 19 April 2021
Health Action International successful recipients of core funding from the European AI Fund We are pleased to announce that Health Action International (HAI) are among 16 civil society organisations who have received targeted core funding from the European Artificial Intelligence (AI) fund. The… HAI Admin 1 April 2021