WHO, WIPO,
WTO Map Out further Collaboration to Tackle COVID-19 Pandemic
The
Directors-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO) and the WTO agreed to enhance their support to members
battling COVID-19 by collaborating on a series of workshops to augment the flow
of information on the pandemic and by implementing a joint platform for tripartite
technical assistance to member governments relating to their needs for medical technologies.
As a result of their meeting on 15 June, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Daren Tang and Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala issued a joint
statement.
On 15
June 2021, we, the Directors-General of WHO, WIPO and the WTO, met in a spirit of
cooperation and solidarity to map out further collaboration to tackle the COVID-19
pandemic and the pressing global challenges at the intersection of public health,
intellectual property and trade. Acutely conscious of our shared responsibility
to communities across the world as they confront a health crisis of unprecedented
severity and scale, we pledged to bring the full extent of the expertise and resources
of our respective institutions to bear in ending the COVID-19 pandemic and improving
the health and well-being of all people, everywhere around the globe.
We underscored
our commitment to universal, equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics,
diagnostics, and other health technologies — a commitment anchored in the understanding
that this is an urgent moral imperative in need of immediate practical action.
In this
spirit, we agreed to build further on our long-standing commitment to WHO-WIPO-WTO Trilateral
Cooperation that aims to support and assist all countries
as they seek to assess and implement sustainable and integrated solutions to public
health challenges. Within this existing cooperative framework, we agreed to enhance
and focus our support in the context of the pandemic through two specific initiatives.
First,
our three agencies will collaborate on the organization of practical, capacity-building
workshops to enhance the flow of updated information on current developments in
the pandemic and responses to achieve equitable access to COVID-19 health technologies.
The aim of these workshops is to strengthen the capacity of policymakers and experts
in member governments to address the pandemic accordingly. The first workshop in
the series will be a workshop on technology transfer and licensing, scheduled for
September. The workshop will help our members update their knowledge and understanding
of how intellectual property, know-how and technology transfer work in actuality.
This would be in the context of medical technologies and related products and services.
This first workshop will be followed by others on related practical themes.
Secondly,
we will implement a joint platform for tripartite technical assistance to countries
relating to their needs for COVID-19 medical technologies, providing a one-stop
shop that will make available the full range of expertise on access, IP and trade
matters provided by our organizations, and other partners, in a coordinated and
systematic manner. The platform for technical assistance will, in particular:
·
support countries to assess and prioritize unmet
needs for COVID-19 vaccines, medicines and related technologies, and
·
provide timely
and tailored technical assistance in making full use of all available options to
access vaccines, medicines and technologies, including through coordination between
members facing similar challenges to facilitate collective responses.
These
initiatives will also be underpinned by our joint efforts to collect and make accessible
robust and inclusive data needed to guide an effective response to the COVID-19
pandemic. This will include a periodical update of the overview of COVID-19-related
measures that are mapped in a key resource for trilateral cooperation, the WHO-WIPO-WTO
publication “Promoting Access to Medical
Technologies and Innovation: Intersections between public health, intellectual property
and trade”, published in 2020.
The World
Health Organization (WHO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and
the World Trade Organization (WTO) have, since 2009, stepped up their cooperation
and practical coordination on issues relating to public health, IP and trade. This
trilateral cooperation is intended to enhance the empirical and factual information
basis for policy makers and to support them in addressing public health in relation
to IP and trade. It has entailed a series of practical technical assistance activities,
at the national, regional and multilateral levels, a series of high-level Policy
Symposia intended to track emerging issues and inform future policy, and the trilateral
study, which provides a comprehensive overview of the full array of policy issues
with bearing on innovation and access to medical technologies.