Statement of Thailand to EB 126 (Jan 2010) on public health, innovation and intellectual property

The following statement was delivered by Thailand on Tuesday, 19 January 2010 during the discussion of agenda item 4.3 on public health, innovation and intellectual property. This statement requested Dr. Chan (Director-General, WHO) to conduct an investigation of the leaks of documents of the WHO Expert Working Group on R&D Financing to the IFPMA. In its statement, Thailand noted that the circle of trust had been broken.

Mr. Chairman,

I thank Madame DG to her explanation about the process and documentations including her constructive advices

We welcome and appreciate the hard work of the Expert working group for more than 2 years.

Anyway, we Thailand would like to express our some degree of disappointment with the progress in the process so far, on the two following issues.

Firstly, the timeliness of the process, the 126th Executive Board Members are supposed to consider the full report, not the Executive Summary. This road map has been clearly defined two years ago, long enough to have better management than this. However, what we have studied is the Executive Summary. The full final report was just distributed two days ago, yet called the Executive Board Members to adopt this 86 page report. This is not far from signature on the blank check situation. So we strongly support Brazil, India and Bolivia’s proposal to set up an informal open-ended consultation to discuss the EWG report before the WHA.

Secondly, we are disappointed with the working process of the Expert Working Group. We are not very confident that the IP issue, which should have been vital issue for the Working Group, has been extensively and adequately discussed including the delinkage of the cost of R&D from price of product. Furthermore Mr. Chairman we are unhappy with the issue of the transparency. There has been a report from the Lancet. This is of course beyond the circle of trust we have in this Working Group. Therefore we would like to request The Director General through you, Mr Chair, to set up the investigation regarding the leaking of the Report.

Thank you Mr. Chair