Rt Hon Nick Hurd MP Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for International Development Department for International Development 22 Whitehall London SW1A 2EG 26th May 2016 Dear Minister, We are writing on behalf of our 8 organisations and the 5,377 people who have signed our Missing Medicines campaign petition urging the UK to push for an ambitious resolution on medical research and development at this week’s World Health Assembly. Over the last 8 months, more than 6,000 people have taken action by signing petitions, writing to their MPs and attending events to show their support for a better R&D model that ensures we produce the medicines we all need at prices we can all afford. As you are aware, our current R&D model is failing our global public health needs. We now have countless examples of its shortcomings. These range from the lack of investment into developing new antibiotics and treatment for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and tuberculosis because of the low profit incentive, to the high prices of cancer drugs and hepatitis C treatment which have contributed to a 15.1% increase (between 2014-2015) in prescription drug spending here at home in the UK. The impact of irresponsible R&D and high prices is now a global problem that requires a global solution. As you are also aware, the World Health Organisation’s Consultative Expert Working Group (CEWG) on Research and Development has been trying to tackle this issue. We were very pleased to read in your letters that the UK support the idea of a pooled fund for global R&D and the establishment of an R&D Observatory and we were encouraged to see the UK represented at the open-ended meeting of the CEWG held at the beginning of May. However for both the pooled fund and the Observatory to be a success they require financial support and we are concerned with the reluctance from the UK to give this. It is encouraging to see the UK investing in the work of PDPs for NTDs but we must face the reality that PDPs are limited in their scope and that this model won’t work for more profitable areas. To see the transformation we want we need the UK to support broader changes to the R&D architecture. Without these changes we will continue to see innovation being financed through high drug prices, patents awarded to ‘novel’ not therapeutically beneficial medicines and the neglect of disease areas that are deemed unprofitable. We are also concerned that the UK’s lack of support for an R&D agreement to facilitate the implementation of the above mentioned initiatives, is based on the concern that time will be lost in getting member states to meet their obligations. However we would argue that voluntary agreements also bare this challenge and that binding agreements, such as the Convention on Tobacco Control and the European Convention on Human Rights have been a success and essential
instruments in achieving social progress. We therefore urge the UK not to close the door on the concept of an R&D agreement. The draft resolution from the open-ended meeting, which will be finalised at this week’s WHA, has some very positive language that we hope the UK will support in order to ensure this decision point is as ambitious as possible. In particular we hope the UK endorses the commitments around developing an R&D observatory; establishing a finance mechanism to fund R&D for global health; ensuring policy coherence between the Global Plan for AMR, the Blueprint for Emerging Pathogens and the UN High Level Panel on Access to Medicines in terms of applying the CEWG principles of affordability, effectiveness, efficiency, equity and de-linkage across these initiatives; and to support another open-ended meeting once the report of the High Level Panel has been released as a next step in the CEWG process. Supporters of the Missing Medicines campaign feel that the resolution will be a crucially important step in our progress on this issue and should be as ambitious as possible. We also feel that the report from the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Access to Medicines presents us with another great opportunity to reform our medical innovation model and specifically, as their mandate prescribes, to solve the policy incoherence between intellectual property rights on the one hand and human rights and public health on the other. We hope the UK government will join us in welcoming the recommendations from the High Level Panel once they are released in the summer and we look forward to working with you closely on creating a plan for how the UK can implement them. Again, we stress the need for the UK to show leadership in this important area as a duty bearer of human rights and to champion health in both its international responsibilities and domestically. We hope that the resolution approved this week is ambitious and presents us with a solid opportunity to improve global public health.
Yours Sincerely, Supporters of the Missing Medicines campaign.