The Directors-General of the WHO, WIPO and the WTO agree on enhanced cooperation in support of access to medical technologies around the world to combat the COVID-19 pandemic

On June 15, 2021, the Directors-General of the WHO, WIPO and WTO, in a spirit of cooperation and solidarity, came together to establish further cooperation in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and the urgent global challenges at the crossroads of public health, intellectual property and trade. Aware of our shared responsibility to communities around the world as we face an unprecedented health crisis of seriousness and scale, we are committed to bringing the full range of expertise and resources of our institutions to stop the COVID-19 pandemic and improve the health and well-being of all people around the world. .

We emphasized our commitment to universal, equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, therapy, diagnostics and other health technologies – a commitment anchored in the understanding that this is an urgent moral imperative that needs urgent practical action.

In this spirit, we agreed to continue to build on our long-standing commitment to WHO-WIPO-WTO trilateral cooperation, which aims to support and assist all countries in their efforts to assess and implement sustainable and integrated solutions to public health challenges. Within this existing framework of cooperation, we agreed to strengthen and direct our support in the context of the pandemic through two specific initiatives.

First, our three agencies will work together to organize hands-on capacity building workshops to improve the flow of updated information on current pandemic developments and responses to achieve equal access to COVID-19 health technologies. The aim of these workshops is to strengthen the capacity of policy makers and experts in Member State governments to address the pandemic accordingly. The first workshop in the series will be a technology transfer and licensing workshop, scheduled for September. The workshop will help our members update their knowledge and understanding of how intellectual property, know-how and technology transfer actually work. This would be in the context of medical technologies and related products and services. This first workshop will be followed by others on related practical topics.

Second, we will implement a common platform for tripartite technical assistance to countries addressing their COVID-19 medical technology needs, providing all in one place that will make available the full range of access, intellectual property and trade expertise it provides to our organizations and other partners, in a coordinated and systematic manner. The technical assistance platform in particular will

• support countries in assessing and prioritizing unmet needs for COVID-19 vaccines, drugs and related technologies, and

• provide timely and tailored technical assistance in the full use of all available opportunities to access vaccines, drugs and technologies, including through coordination between members facing similar challenges to facilitate collective responses.

These initiatives will also be supported by our joint efforts to collect and make available the robust and comprehensive data needed to guide an effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This will include periodic updates of reviews of measures related to COVID 19 mapped in a key resource for trilateral cooperation, WHO-WIPO-WTO publication ‘Promoting access to medical technologies and innovation: cross-sections between public health, intellectual property and trade’, published 2020

Background

Since 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) have stepped up cooperation and practical coordination on issues related to public health, intellectual property and trade. The intention of this trilateral cooperation is to improve the empirical and factual information base for policy makers and to support them in addressing public health issues related to intellectual property and trade. It included a series of practical technical assistance activities at national, regional and multilateral levels, a series of high-level policy symposia aimed at monitoring new issues and informing about future policy, and a trilateral study providing a comprehensive overview of a range of policy issues related to innovation and access. medical technologies.