Access campaign

Access to medicines: MSF applauds US’ leadership on waiving IP for COVID-19 vaccines

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NEW YORK — Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontierès (MSF) applauds the Biden-Harris Administration’s decision to support waiving intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines. Doing so will increase sufficient and timely access to these lifesaving medical tools as COVID-19 continues to ravage countries across the globe. Many of the low-income countries in which MSF operates have only received 0.3 percent of global … Read more

MSF to wealthy countries: Don’t block and ruin the potential of a landmark waiver on monopolies during the pandemic

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Geneva, Switzerland — Ahead of the next round of talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to discuss a proposal by South Africa and India to waive monopolies on COVID-19 medical tools during the pandemic, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) called on the wealthy countries opposing the proposal not to block it and ruin … Read more

Access to medicines: Will history repeat itself?

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Rebutting pharma’s rejection of a global COVID-19 IP waiver By Felipe Carvalho, Yuanqiong Hu, Leena Menghaney In response to the COVID-19 “TRIPS waiver” proposal submitted by South Africa and India for a temporary waiver from certain pharmaceutical intellectual property (IP) obligations at the World Trade Organization (WTO), Thomas Cueni, the director-general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical … Read more

Access to medicines: Five people, five reasons we need to overcome monopolies on medicines

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Charles, Tobeka, Din, Nandita, and baby ‘Janey’. Four of these people have struggled for their lives. One of them has lost her life. All because pharma companies put profits before people. This is what can happen when companies get hold of patents and other monopolies on medicines and then exploit them to make money. The patents surround the medicine … Read more

COVID-19: Governments must act fast on consensus supporting historic move to suspend monopolies during pandemic

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Over 100 countries support the landmark proposal Geneva —Ahead of a critical meeting at the World Trade Organization (WTO) tomorrow — and against the backdrop of COVID-19 cases surging globally — the international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières /Doctors Without Borders (MSF) urged all countries to act in solidarity and build consensus around the … Read more

COVID-19: Pfizer and Moderna vaccines can only be scaled up globally if many more suppliers can produce

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Geneva – As the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) starts meeting today and later this month to discuss emergency use authorisation of both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine candidates, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warns that any eventual COVID-19 vaccine approval won’t be enough to solve the global pandemic unless corporations take urgent … Read more

5 reasons a new proposal by India and South Africa could be a gamechanger in the COVID-19 response

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5 reasons a new proposal by India and South Africa could be a gamechanger in the COVID-19 response. And why ALL governments should support it. On October 2, 2020, India and South Africa submitted a landmark proposal to the World Trade Organization. The ground-breaking move proposes to ease rules that impose intellectual property (IP) barriers that restrict … Read more

Access to Medicines: In landmark move, India and South Africa propose no patents on COVID-19 medicines, tools during pandemic

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Governments make request to WTO for intellectual property waiver for all countries until herd immunity reached Geneva – In a landmark move, India and South Africa on 2 October asked the World Trade Organization (WTO) to allow all countries to choose to neither grant nor enforce patents and other intellectual property (IP) related to COVID-19 … Read more

Tuberculosis: Policies should ‘help facilitate access to life saving treatment not create barriers.’

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Stobdan Kalon is a medical doctor working with Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (MSF). His experience spans from managing infectious diseases, interventions in Drug Resistant-Tuberculosis (DR-TB), hepatitis and HIV. As a doctor, I am elated that the World Health Organization (WHO) has updated their DR-TB treatment guidelines, which approves concomitant use of Bedaquiline and Delamanid … Read more

Tuberculosis: MSF welcomes WHO revision in TB guidelines and urges greater access and affordability in India to new regimen

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New Delhi, India: Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has welcomed the revision made by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to its tuberculosis (TB) guidelines, allowing for safe use of a treatment regimen including both bedaquiline and delamanid for drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) patients, while urging a faster uptake in India for patients with extensively drug-resistant … Read more