A New Deal for Global Health R&D? The Recommendations of the Consultative Expert Working Group on Research and Development (CEWG)

摘要

In May 2012 at the World Health Assembly, member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) have the opportunity to make substantial progress on a major global health challenge: how to catalyse new knowledge for diseases that primarily affect the global poor and for which patents provide insufficient market incentives. The existing system can neither adequately develop nor deliver health technologies addressing health concerns mainly or only constituting a problem in developing countries. Those markets have no ability to pay the high prices needed to recover research and development (R&D) costs, which is the way the current system operates. We need mechanisms that delink the cost of R&D from the price of products.