After several days of negotiations, the 128th WHO Executive Board has accepted the nomination of Paul Herrling to the new WHO Consultative Expert Working Group on R&D Financing, despite the fact that Herrling is an executive of Novartis, and is the author of the IFPMA/Novartis/FRIND proposal and the co-author of the PDP Plus proposal, which will be considered by the CEWG.
On January 20, 2011, 9 civil society organizations sent a letter to the WHO Executive Board registering an objection to the selection of Dr. Paul Herrling of Novartis to the WHO Consultative Expert Working Group on Research and Development: Financing and Coordination. The groups signing the letter were:
WHO has kindly made available its conflict of interest guidelines. Apparently they are not available from the public web page. Attached are two documents:
A few of the many interesting provisions follow:
I. MEANING OF “CONFLICT OF INTEREST”Ska Keller tables MEP question on ethical aspects of pharmaceutical test data protection
On Tuesday the 18th of January 2010,German Green MEP Franziska Keller tabled this Parliamentary question:
European members of WHO Executive Board take hard line on nomination of Novartis official to R&D group
At the 128th meeting of the WHO Executive Board (EB), the European members of the board are reportedly taking a hard line on the proposal by Switzerland to have Paul Herrling, an executive of Novartis, appointed to the WHO Consultative Expert Working Group (CEWG) on R&D financing. Our earlier blogs on this controversy are available here and here).
US government urges WHO to support Medicines Patent Pool: Extract of US intervention on draft WHO HIV/AIDS strategy 2011–2015
On Tuesday’s discussion at the 128th Executive Board on the Draft WHO HIV/AIDS strategy 2011–2015, the United States made a strong intervention (delivered by Dr. Nils Daulaire, Director, Office of Global Health Affairs, Department of Health and Human Services) in support of the Medicines Patent Pool drawing attention to the fact that the draft HIV/AIDS strategy while making reference to a more competitive market for ARVs, failed to recognized the importance of the Medicines Patent Pool.
Here below are the remarks of the US on this point:
Conflicts of Interest, and the WHO evaluation of the FRIND and the PDP Plus funding proposals by the CEWG
This note provide additional context for those who are just now following the issue of conflicts of interest and the WHO Consultative Expert Working Group (CEWG) on R&D Financing.
The CEWG follows a controversial, flawed and failed effort by an earlier group, the WHO Expert Working Group (EWG) on R&D Financing, to:
The WHO EB debate over membership of the new R&D Financing consultative expert working group (CEWG)
At the end of the day on Monday, the 128 WHO Executive Board meeting took the agenda item for creation of a new R&D Financing consultative expert working group (CEWG). (Yesterday’s blog on this topic is here)
World Health Organization Executive Board to create new consultative expert working group on R&D Financing
Today the WHO is expected to take up the Report by the Secretariat on “the Establishment of a consultative expert working group on research and development: financing and coordination.” (link here).
Google hits by domain using search term “Gates Foundation”
The following reports the number of Google hits using the search term “gates foundation,” with a site:domainname option, on January 7, 2011. The result is a count of the number of web pages (visible to Google) mentioning the Gates Foundation on a particular domain.
For example, the google search site:who.int “gates foundation” identified 5,940 pages on the who.int web site that have the exact phrase, “gates foundation.”
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