26 February 2016

Joint submission by the EU Alliance for responsible R&D and affordable medicines to the United Nations High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines. Representatives of civil society – consumer, patient and public/global health organisations – call for the creation of a research and development (R&D) framework that is driven by global public health needs and delivers quality medicines that are universally accessible and affordable

> Click here to download the Joint Submission (pdf, 57 Ko)

Summary

Due to the urgency needed to resolve the failures of our current system for researching and developing medicines in order to avoid loss of life we propose a phased approach to reform, set out below.

Remedy the most acute problems with our current market-driven pharmaceutical model by:

• Securing affordable prices through using effective price control mechanisms and strengthening the use of full TRIPS flexibilities in all countries
• Putting an end to pharmaceutical monopolies by promoting generic and biosimilar competition and their usage; increasing scrutiny of anti-competitive practices by the pharmaceutical industry and strengthening the work and use of the Medicines Patent Pool
• Demanding more stringent proof of therapeutic advance before authorizing new medicines into the market
• Implement full transparency of pharmaceutical R&D and medicine price setting, by:
  • Promoting open access to all research data
  • Fully disclosing and tracking public and private funding for pharmaceutical R&D
  • Establishing a publicly accessible database where health systems publish the price of medicines that they negotiate

Promote a new global biomedical R&D agreement which would include:

• Committing increased public funds to support a needs-driven approach to pharmaceutical R&D that delivers affordable health technologies while ensuring both transparency and public return for public investment.
• Funding new R&D initiatives which delink the real costs of R&D from the end price
• Creating a global observatory for R&D to track spending, identify areas of health need and encourage coordinated research efforts into priority areas through open-source research to deliver safe and effective medicines that offer real therapeutic progress.
   

©EU Alliance for Responsible R&D and Affordable Medicines 2016

> Click here to download the Joint Submission (pdf, 57 Ko)