Author: James Love

On March 4, 2016, KEI provided comments to the US Senate Committee on Finance on a report prepared by staff for Senators Grassley and Wyden that was issued by the committee on December 2015, titled “The Price of Sovaldi and Its Impact on the U.S. Health Care System.” Senators Grassley and Wyden asked the public to comment on various issues raised in the report. The comments we filed on March 4 included three major sections.

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(More on Colombia here: /colombia)

Andrea Carolina Reyes Rojas informs us that a committee appointed to consider a request for a compulsory license on the leukemia drug Imatinib has decided that there are public interest reasons to do so.

A copy of the decision is available here. Andrew Goldman shares some thoughts and context here.

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DHHS has declared a public health emergency over the Zika virus, and authorized emergency use of diagnostic tests. (Copy here)

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(An expanded, edited and better version of this is available in our March 4, 2016 reply comment to USTR, available here: https://www.keionline.org/node/2440)

These were my notes from my testimony for KEI at today’s USTR Special 301 hearing

Big market puts countries on the #special301 watch list

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KEI is one of the non-government entities speaking at the USTR Special 301 hearing on Tuesday. We each get 7 minutes of testimony and 3 minutes of questions. (The schedule is here).

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I am in a meeting of the Equitable Access Initiative (EAI), which is considering new ways of measuring development and/or health needs, in the context of the priority setting by donors. I am a member of the Expert Panel, and this was my intervention in the morning session:

The presentations by John McArthur and Dominik Zotti were excellent, and the work of the four expert groups is a very useful contribution for those struggling with the challenge of setting priorities for aid.

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The NIH has a notice for comments on proposed licenses of several patents relating to the “Production of Attenuated Respiratory Syncytial Virus Vaccines”. See: https://federalregister.gov/a/2016-03486

We asked Peter Soukas, a Senior Technology Licensing Specialist in the Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property Office, at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), these questions:

1. What provisions exist in the license to protect US residents against excessive or unreasonable pricing?

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This is the announcement.

For Immediate Release February 10, 2016

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

With a view to receiving the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification, I transmit herewith the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled, done at Marrakesh on June 27, 2013 (Marrakesh Treaty). I also transmit, for the information of the Senate, a report of the Secretary of State with respect to the Marrakesh Treaty that includes a summary of its provisions.

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