During this year’s World Health Assembly, the WHO Director-General report on Addressing the global shortage of, and access to, medicines and vaccines stated that one of the actions considered by the Secretariat as having the greatest potential impact on access to safe, effective and quality medicines is the expansion of the Medicines Patent Pool to include all antimicrobial medicines and patented medicines from the WHO Essential Medicines List.

The MPP welcomed this report and thanked Unitaid for the continuous support and WHO, Member States and other stakeholders for having encouraged the global health community to test his innovative patent pooling approach in other disease areas. We are looking forward to intensifying the collaboration.

The MPP also welcomed the report by the Director-General on the Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property (GSPOA), which also recommends expansion of the MPP to other diseases or technologies.

Finally, the MPP followed with attention discussions for the Preparation for a high-level meeting of the General Assembly on ending tuberculosis and for the Preparation for the third High-level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases, both to be held in 2018.

Read MPP’s interventions on the Global strategy and plan of action on public health, innovation and intellectual property, and on Addressing the global shortage of, and access to, medicines and vaccines.