Children deserve child-friendly medicines – those that are optimal, tailored to their metabolism, with acceptable palatability, not bulky and easy to take.

The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) is proud to have participated in this year’s Vatican meeting on 5-6 November 2020. The high-level dialogue focused on assessing progress and intensifying commitment to scaling up diagnosis and treatment of paediatric HIV and TB in children living with HIV.

Keeping “access to child-friendly medicines” high on the agenda, MPP’s intervention by our Executive Director Charles Gore focused on the following key aspects:


On behalf of the Medicines Patent Pool, I would like to:

1. Reiterate our dedication to the Global Accelerator for Paediatric Formulation (and our support to the numerous GAP-f commitments to this platform). In GAP-f, along with all co-founding members, MPP contributes to efficient coordination with innovator and generic pharmaceutical companies, identifying and engaging manufacturers to develop, commercialise and sustainably supply affordable, quality-assured prioritised paediatric drug formulations (i.e. those prioritised by WHO, PADO processes and GAP-f). In support of this, MPP licences have always been royalty-free when it comes to paediatric use of licensed medicines.

2. Welcome and offer our support to theAccess to Medicine Foundation commitment[1] to expand the scope of their Access to Medicine Index and better highlight critical paediatric treatment R&D and access issues.

3. Reaffirm our 2017 and 2018 commitments to facilitate access to the best available medicines for children and ensure that relevant stakeholders, including procurement agencies, governments, treatment advocates and affected communities, are aware of opportunities from public-health licences, thereby making sure that access opportunities for adapted paediatric products transform into real uptake on the ground.“

Additional resources:

Rome Action Plan online tracker: The Rome Action Plan is a compilation of commitments by key stakeholders to accelerate research, development, registration, introduction and uptake of HIV diagnostics and optimal antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) for children living with HIV, with the ultimate objective of reducing morbidity and mortality among this highly vulnerable group. This year’s event also brought into discussion the particular issues related to preventing, diagnosing, and treating tuberculosis in children living with HIV.

[1] Commitment from our partner “The Access to Medicine Foundation”:

1. Include paediatric R&D and product deployment research and analysis in the next Access to Medicine Index, highlighting critical paediatric treatment R&D issues and actions pharmaceutical companies are taking to address those, by January 2021

2. Explore additional methods of including paediatric access issues in the following editions of the Access to Medicine Index and to do so as part of the next Access to Medicine Index Methodology review process, by December 2021.