Plan to stimulate research in developing countries is put on hold
BMJ 2012; 344 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e3771 (Published 28 May 2012) Cite this as: BMJ 2012;344:e3771Health officials have failed to come to an agreement on a binding convention on stimulating research and development focusing on the health problems of developing countries.
Last week’s World Health Assembly, the World Health Organization’s decision making body, saw negotiations throughout the week on a report published by WHO in April. A key recommendation of that report was that all countries—developing and developed—should commit around 0.01% of their gross domestic product to research into and development of treatments for the health problems of developing countries.
The United States (despite the fact that it already meets this target), the European Union, and Japan blocked this recommendation, and instead member states agreed on the final day of the assembly that the report would be discussed at regional committee meetings in the next few months. WHO will hold a global meeting later in the year that will report back to WHO’s executive board meeting in January. New proposals will be put on the agenda for next year’s assembly.
Campaigners from low and middle income countries and non-governmental organisations lobbied hard through the week to try to ensure that a deal was made. It was the Brazilian delegation that proposed the compromise motion.
Michelle Childs, director of policy and advocacy at the charity Médecins Sans Frontières, described the negotiations as extremely tough, with the US, the EU (led by France), and Japan “making every effort to block progress on what health experts agree should be the way forward to meet the medical needs of people in developing countries.”
She added: “While there’s no doubt we are disappointed that there was not an immediate decision to move towards an R&D [research and development] convention, countries have agreed to a formal process for considering the report’s recommendations.”
The charity added that WHO’s only binding agreement so far—on tobacco control—began with a similar process, and it is optimistic that there could be a binding convention on research and development in the future.
The charity said that the areas in which research was most needed were more effective treatments for drug resistant tuberculosis; paediatric versions of HIV drugs; a test to determine the effectiveness of treatment of Chagas’s disease; new antibiotics, in the face of increasing resistance; and vaccines that do not need to be refrigerated or can be given without an injection.
Mohga Kamal-Yanni, a senior policy adviser at Oxfam, said that a binding agreement that included developing countries would stimulate research institutions in these countries.
“Developing countries have to be active participants in researching these diseases, otherwise they will not progress. If they invest their own money they have a say in which health problems they want to tackle,” she said.
The report on research and development, published by an expert working group in April,1 called on developing countries with a potential research capacity to aim to commit between 0.05% and 0.1% of gross domestic product to government funded health research. It urged developed countries to aim to commit between 0.15% and 0.2% of gross domestic product to government funded health research of all kinds.
The report said that current incentive systems have failed to generate enough research and development in either the public or private sectors. It said that the incentive offered by intellectual property rights has failed to create an environment that encouraged new treatments because demand for these products was not reliable.
It added: “We have the technical means to provide access to life-saving medicines, and to develop new products needed in developing countries, but millions of people suffer and die for lack of access to existing products and to those that do not yet exist.”
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Cite this as: BMJ 2012;344:e3771