Statement | 2 September 2019 | Download PDF
Health Action International’s Senior Policy Advisor for European Projects, Jaume Vidal, delivered a statement in the plenary for the 69th Regional Committee World Health Organisation European Region (WHO-EURO) addressing transparency of markets for medicines.
The statement highlighted the Resolution WHA72.8 from the working document Matters arising from resolutions and decisions of the World Health Assembly and the Executive Board (EUR/RC69/6 ) that called for Improving the transparency of markets for medicines, vaccines and other health products.
We believe WHO could, for example, provide assistance to national authorities in the legal and administrative process of making WHA72.8 operational at a national level. This should go hand-in-hand with other initiatives, such as the Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property, and its recommendation to shed light, in an independent, accessible and reliable manner, on the patent status of health products.
Health Action International, 2019
The statement intended to recognise the implementation path that the committee suggested, and outlined the responsibility of the World Health Organization (WHO), through its European office, to mandate to engage with Member States to do more to improve access to medicines. This could be achieved by increasing transparency of pharmaceutical markets and countering information asymmetries in pharmaceutical markets.
This could be achieved by WHO providing assistance to national authorities in the legal and administrative process of making WHA72.8 operational at a national level.
Finally, the statement encouraged Member States to give due consideration to the report of the 2nd edition of the Fair Pricing Forum and to support the efforts of its Working Groups regarding delinkage and transparency of the costs of research and development, among other critical elements of discussion.
Read the full statement from Jaume Vidal in the plenary.