Nine months after a historic high-level UN meeting where countries pledged to end the global tuberculosis epidemic by 2030, a chronic lack of R&D financing jeopardises that ambitious goal, said expert panelists at a briefing on the TB R&D landscape last week in Geneva, hosted by South Africa’s Permanent Mission to the UN.

The World Health Organization, the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), UNAIDS, UNICEF, and the Global Fund co-signed the “Interagency statement on promoting local production of medicines and other health-related technologies.”

23 May: The fate of a potentially game-changing World Health Assembly resolution that would support greater national and global transparency in drug pricing remained in the balance today as the country co-sponsors tabled a resolution riddled with comments and caveats, and a “drafting group” was urgently formed to huddle on ways to move forward on a compromise text.

Despite the widespread view that the flexibilities included in international trade rules are not often used, a new study found that countries make extensive use of those flexibilities.

Access to affordable and quality medicines for all is one of the major commitments of the World Health Organization, and its new medicines and health products strategic framework for the next 15 years calls for new research and development (R&D) models, including delinkage of the R&D costs from the price of products, and fair pricing.

A group of non-governmental organisations organised a side event to the World Health Assembly to discuss the growing issue of antimicrobial resistance, the way to incentivise research and development for new antibiotics, and the imperative of affordability and accessibility of new products. The speakers mentioned alternative models, such as delinking the cost of research from the price of the medicines, underlined the high prices of vaccines, and the importance of systems of infection prevention and control.

Two new studies published by the World Health Organization provide insight on the production of pharmaceutical products in India and China. According to the studies, China has a substantial local pharmaceutical manufacturing sector which the Chinese government is closely linking to its policy objective of universal health care. India, the main global provider of generic medicines is not pursuing a comparable focus on universal health care. India is increasingly faced with Chinese pharmaceutical sector competition, with China being its main provider of commoditized active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).

The World Health Organization has concluded a major one-day forum on fair pricing of medicines, bringing a wide range of stakeholders together in Amsterdam and coming up with several possible actions for the way ahead. Key points of discussion included a definition of fair pricing, moving away from value-based pricing, delinkage of price from research and development costs, and greater transparency, according to participants.

In the face of the lack of attractiveness of investing in research for new antibiotics for the pharmaceutical industry, and the general lack of funding for research and development for novel antibiotics, a new report commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of Health calls for countries to take action. In particular, the report proposes a global union for research and development, a global research fund, and a global launch reward. And access and pricing are key components of the strategy, it says.

A new international alliance to support the United Nations Resolution on Antimicrobial Resistance was launched this week (November 14-18). The Conscience of Antimicrobial Resistance Accountability (CARA) aims to bring together organisations committing to reporting on mutually agreed upon indicators in countries around the world, and to hold the UN and other stakeholders accountable to their commitments.