Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) last week picked up the task of navigating an unwieldy negotiation on a Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) mechanism towards an agreeable...

On 9 June, the Chilean Congress approved a Technology and Knowledge Transfer bill (Ley de Transferencia de Tecnología y Conocimiento) that makes important strides towards open science and knowledge sharing...

The government of Malaysia has began to roll out treatment of people infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV).  Treatment will be a combination of antivirals (sofosbuvir and daclatasvir) from generic...

World Health Organization member states will propose to continue negotiations to finalise a critical annex to the Pandemic Agreement, after being unable to bridge key disagreements in time for their...

Co-chairs, Thank you for the opportunity to say a few words.  My comments address issues related to technology transfer (TT), a topic we have been following throughout the INB negotiations...

LONDON, UK: Millions of people are priced out of access to life-saving medicines. Use of legal tools to reduce prices has been under-reported and misunderstood to be rare, but new...

The end of 2025, a tumultuous year for global public health, is here, and it’s time for the usually highly biased Medicines Law & Policy report of the key events...

2019 had its share of noteworthy medicines law and policy events. It was also a year that saw eye-popping new levels of pharmaceutical pricing. And governments in response began to...

Welcome to our 2023 end-of-the-year blog, our annual and highly-biased run-through of notable access to medicines events of the year that is about to end.  As we close the year,...

Welcome to Medicines Law & Policy’s  end of the year blog, our highly biased annual overview of memorable medicines law and policy events. January At the January World Trade Organization’s...

We are reaching the end of 2018: Time for our end-of-the-year roundup of some significant developments in medicines law and policy. January The Chilean parliament started 2018, on 3 January,...

Welcome to the annual end of the year blog, our highly biased overview of noteworthy events in the field of medicines law and policy. It will not come as a...

Welcome to our annual, highly biased, overview of noteworthy events in the field of medicines law and policy. Also in 2022, Covid-19 remained a central concern in global health and...

With drastic reductions in health aid threatening essential services and millions of lives, WHO issues new guidance for countries to safeguard health budgets, limit out-of-pocket payments, and mobilis...

This post is also available as a PDF here. Almost 26 years ago, here in Amsterdam, on November 25-26, 1999, Health Action International, Médecins Sans Frontières, and the Consumer Project...

We appreciate the opportunity to offer comments on the draft PABS annex text . Some preliminary comments: Affordability of Access: The current draft mentions "providing access to products" and "rapid...

Generic versions of a cystic fibrosis treatment will now be available at $6,375 per child, per year under a new scheme – offering hope to parents unable to afford the...

Co-Chairs,  Thank you for the opportunity to make a brief intervention. Both the sharing of pathogens and the sharing of the benefits, including products and knowledge, resulting from this should...

In May 2025, the WHO member states adopted the Pandemic Agreement, but they left the work to establish an instrument for Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) for a later...

The World Health Organization today announced it has added the cystic fibrosis combination treatment elexacaftor + tezacaftor + ivacaftor (brand name Trikafta) to its Model Lists of Essential Medicines (EML)...

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the United States prioritised the rapid development of products needed to combat the health crisis.  Rapid product development was pursued through the use of a statute...

On 18th June 2015, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of long-acting antiretroviral medicine lenacapavir (LEN-LA), for the prevention of HIV, also known as pre-exposure prophylaxis...

A version of this brief was published on 13 June '25 by the Graduate Institute as part of their 'Governing Pandemic Snapshot' series: https://www.governingpandemics.org/gp-snapshot During the COVID-19 pandemic, the delayed...

Today, 9 May 2025, is an important day in court for the Dutch Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation (PAF). In February 2023, PAF started a court case against AbbVie, over AbbVie’s excessive...

In December 2021, the member states of the World Health Organization decided “to draft and negotiate a WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response”,...

This is an excerpt from a longer report on AI, medicines development and the patent system. Download the full report here (or by clicking on the image at left). Rapid...

Madam co-chairs, delegates,  This very week, from 7 to 9 April the 3rd World Local Production Forum is taking place in Abu Dhabi. Actions towards expanding local production of medical...

Thank you for the opportunity to speak. And for the latest draft of the pandemic agreementshared with us on 26 March. In particular, we were pleased to see in the...

This commentary originally appeared in the Brussels Times, and is available here. The Pandemic Agreement negotiations began in December of 2021. Sufficiently motivated by the devastation brought by the COVID-19...

On 4 March, Politico reported that the Polish presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) is expressing doubt that the Pandemic Agreement being negotiated at the World Health...

Earlier this week I listened to a testimony from a community worker at a maternity ward where HIV-positive women gave birth. 17 babies were born. Under normal circumstances, simple antiretroviral...

Antimicrobial resistance is the ‘silent’ pandemic: Globally, it costs 5 million lives a year, and is set to rise to more than 8 million lives lost a year by 2050....

There will be no pandemic agreement by year-end and, with only 10 days of formal talks set aside in 2025, some parties doubt whether an agreement can be