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Italy’s WHO resolution: Improving the transparency of markets for drugs, vaccines and other health-related technologies

UK civil society letter to the UK government strongly opposing the amendments presented to the World Health Assembly transparency resolution.

“We, the undersigned UK based civil society organisations and patient organisations, strongly oppose the proposals made by the UK Government and several countries at the May 7, 2019 informal on the World Health Assembly (WHA) transparency resolution. The April 29, 2019 version of the resolution, sent to governments by the WHO with ten co-sponsors from Europe, Asia and Africa, was focused on transparency, providing concrete measures to address high drug prices and aimed to help remedy the information asymmetry between governments and pharmaceutical companies when negotiating medicine prices.The resolution, set out an ambitious but practical agenda for making drug prices, research and development (R&D) investments, patent landscapes and clinical trial outcomes progressively more transparent, and access to information more equal.

The 11 brackets to the text suggested by the UK, plus other proposed changes from other member states, would make this resolution significantly weaker.”