Groningen Centre for Health Law

This year the World Health Organization (WHO) added dolutegravir, an antiretroviral medicine for the treatment of HIV infection, to its Model List of Essential Medicines in response to the recent evidence showing the medicine’s safety, efficacy, and high barrier to resistance. A recent study HIV drug resistance report 2017 launched by the WHO at the IAS2017 shows that in 6 of the 11 countries surveyed in Africa, Asia and Latin America, over 10% of people starting antiretroviral therapy had a strain of HIV that was resistant to some of the most widely used HIV medicines. This is a worrying trend and such levels of resistance demand a review of the treatment practices including switching to more robust ARV regimen.

The belief that a country can only use compulsory licensing in cases of public health emergencies is a myth that has proven difficult to bust.

This week during the WHO’s 70th World Health Assembly, GHLG member Ellen ‘t Hoen announced the launch of the new website, ‘Medicines Law & Policy’, established with colleagues Pascale Boulet and Kaitlin Mara, all experts in intellectual property and access to medicines. ML&P provides expertise in the form of policy and legal analyses, best practice models, and other information to work toward the goal of ensuring the availability of effective, safe, and affordable medicines for all.

Excessively high prices of innovative medicines threaten patient access and health system sustainability in developing and industrialised countries alike. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has launched a new initiative to facilitate high-level dialogue between stakeholders on access to innovative medicines and the sustainability of prices. On April 30, 2017, members of the GHLG Research Centre and the Global Health Unit in the Dept. of Health Sciences at the University Medical Centre Groningen responded to OECD’s online consultation for sustainable access to innovative medicines. Below are excerpts from our response.

At the end of March 2017, the Italian Minister of Health Beatrice Lorenzin authorised the importation of generic medicines. She did this with only a veiled reference to the high-priced hepatitis C (HCV) medicine sofosbuvir, marketed under the trade name Sovaldi. However, the authorisation is not restricted to the treatment of HCV and can be used to find alternatives for any medicine not available or affordable in Italy.

Irregular migrants face obstacles when trying to obtain health care. In order to enjoy the right to health, it is necessary to create a central reporting point to monitor actual obstacles in the access of health care of irregular migrants.