WHO "is letting govts off the hook"

UK-based global think-tank, the International Policy Net-work, issued a statement in response to the publication of the World Health Organization's Commission on Intel-lectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public Health (see page 17), accusing the reports' authors of failing to "iden-tify the real reasons why access to medicines remains so low in many parts of the world." Philip Stevens, the IPN's Health Program Director, pointed to the lack of infra-structure: hospitals, health care workers, road networks and power supplies, as well as bureaucratic obstacles by the governments of the world's poorest countries.

The IPN earlier joined with 15 other groups worldwide to produce the report: The Civil Society Report on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Health, which was published shortly before the WHO commission's own study. The Civil Society research was conducted over a five-month period by think-tanks across the globe.

Mr Stevens, one of the report's authors, found a range of policies implemented by governments in less-developed countries that actively prevented the distribution of medi-cines. He said: "these governments place tariffs and taxes on drugs, thereby pricing the poor and sick out of treat-ment. They also impose labyrinthine and time-consuming requirements on those who wish to export [US] Food and Drug Administration and European Union-approved drugs." Mr Stevens added that price controls on medicines tends to lead to the closure of remote rural pharmacies, leaving whole areas without access to pharmaceutical products, a problem which recently affected South Africa after the government there imposed a range of controls that effectively discriminated against rural pharmacies.