TheWorld Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) will hold a a high-level policy symposium in the ‘’early summer’’ to take stock of Covid-19 challenges and plan further steps to recover from the health crisis.
WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and WIPO Director General Daren Tang met in Geneva earlier this week and carried out a review of technical capacity building workshops over the past few months, including one on intellectual property licensing, technology transfer and sharing of know-how and clinical trial information, according to a statement issued by the WTO.
Making informed choices
An event has been planned this month to help policymakers in various member countries use data more effectively to make their pandemic policy choices and a subsequent workshops will address challenges of access relating to diagnostic technologies.
WTO members have been trying to arrive at a consensus on meeting IP related challenges to the freer flow of Covid-19 vaccines and medical products but an agreement has been elusive. A proposal made in October 2020 by India and South Africa for a temporary waiver of TRIPS obligations on identified vaccines, medicines and health products during the on-going pandemic is yet to be approved despite huge support from developing countries and LDCs.
The DGs said the high-level symposium planned in early summer will also discuss ways to better prepare for future pandemics.
WTO, WHO and WIPO will also launch a trilateral technical assistance platform soon, which will provide a one-stop shop making available the three organisations’ expertise to governments in a coordinated way so as best to respond to individual national needs for Covid-19 health technologies, the statement added.
The three DGs reaffirmed their commitment to working closely together to help overcome the Covid-19 pandemic and its devastating human, social, and economic impacts.
They also welcomed the ongoing efforts by their organisations to make up-to-date information available, including the series of joint Covid-19 information notes, that supplemented and updated the 2020 joint publication `Promoting Access to Medical Technologies and Innovation’.