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The Norwegian Foreign Affairs Ministry is hosting the
workshop, which is on “Differential Pricing and
Financing of Essential Drugs”, and will be held at
Høsbjør, Norway from 8 to 11 April 2001. The Global
Health Council, a broad-based US non-government
organization in the health-care field, is organizing the
event.
The
workshop will be a meeting of experts, not an
intergovernmental conference. It will provide an
opportunity for the experts to exchange views on an
important subject that has received a considerable amount
of public attention. It will explore how to achieve
public health objectives within the framework of WTO
trade and intellectual property
rules.
It
will look at the full range of obstacles that developing
countries face in obtaining essential drugs, both
patented and generic. A main focus will be on the
questions of differential pricing and financing.
Differential
pricing — sometimes called “tiered” or
“equity” pricing — means charging lower
prices in poorer countries.
The
workshop will explore the conditions that would provide a
win-win situation — one that would benefit everyone
involved.
Among
the questions that will be examined in detail are how to
prevent low-priced drugs from leaking back from poor
countries to rich ones.
On
the financing side, the question is how much is needed to
purchase essential drugs through international and
domestic sources, and how it can be raised.
The
workshop will bring together about 50 experts from
industrialized and developing countries. They will come
from research-based and generic manufacturers,
governments, intergovernmental organizations,
non-governmental organizations concerned with
international health and consumer rights, and academics
and consultants who are expert in drugs, financing,
pricing or trade policy. The workshop is not expected to
produce pledges or joint commitments.
A
press statement summarizing the main points of discussion
will be issued immediately after the workshop.
Documents commissioned and presented in the workshop will
also be publicly available, along with a jointly
published WHO-WTO secretariat report of the workshop, in
May 2001.
The
workshop itself will be closed to the media, but
journalists who would like more information about the
issues discussed are welcome to contact:
WTO,
Geneva — Peter Ungphakorn:
tel (41-22) 739 54 12,
email peter.ungphakorn@wto.org
WHO,
Geneva — Jon Liden:
tel (41-22) 791 39 82,
email lidenj@who.int;
and Gregory Hartl: tel
(41-22) 791 44 58, email hartlg@who.int
Norwegian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Oslo — Jon
Mørland:
tel (47) 22 24 39 11,
email jon@mfa.no
Global
Health Council, Washington DC — Mary
Partlow: tel (1-202) 833 5900;
email media@globalhealth.org
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*
Joint WTO-WHO-Norwegian Foreign Ministry-Global Health
Council press release
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