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Patents and innovation
Pharmaceutical companies and many governments argue that regardless of their impact on drug prices, patents are necessary for research and development (R&D).  Charging higher prices, so the argument goes, allows them to get a big financial return on their investment, and they can then re-invest in more R&D.  Without patents in other words, there will be no innovation.

This is easily disproved.  Africa accounts for some 1% of the world’s medicine market.  Even if the big pharmaceutical companies ended up making no sales on the continent, their profits – and therefore the money available to them to invest into R&D -  would be only negligibly impacted.  Their ability to generate income to perform more research depends overwhelmingly on sales in wealthy markets.  Yet patents are pursued just as vehemently in developing countries as they are in wealthier nations.

Why neglected diseases stay neglected
Further, a system where patents and monopoly pricing constitute the incentive to medical innovation causes serious collateral damage: the desperate neglect of the diseases that affect 90% of the world’s population.  

Indeed, patents can stimulate R&D for new medicines only when there is a commercially viable market. But for some diseases which mainly affect the poor, such as tuberculosis, or sleeping sickness, the lack of lucrative rewards means that patents are unable to stimulate innovation: a patent holder will never be able to make a profit by charging high prices, so little R&D is conducted on these diseases. 

Twin problems, one solution: tackling innovation and access together
R&D into medicines is expensive, and someone has to pay.  But in today’s world, that person is the patient.  The predominant system for drug development today has two deadly effects, then: high prices on the one hand, and the lack of R&D into diseases of the poor on the other.  

If the world is to come up with a way of developing medicines which makes sure that those who need them can access them, we will therefore need to look at both medical innovation and access to medicines at the same time.

In May 2008, the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted a Global Strategy and Plan of Action that sought to do just that. It was the culmination of a two year process known as the Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property. 

The IGWG was established by the member states of the WHO in 2006 to tackle the problems with the current access to medicines and R&D environments.  The forum was groundbreaking in that it was the first high-level international body to consider both questions at the same time.   

Two years later, the multilateral negotiations delivered a Global Strategy to address the problems of access and R&D.  Now the question is getting governments and WHO to turn their words into deeds.

Read more about medical innovation

Last updated: January 2009