Ambassador Mero (United Republic of Tanzania)

Japón

13 The United Nations Secretary-General's High-Level Panel Report on Access to Medicines

656. The delegation of Japan believes that careful consideration should be given to the High-Level Panel Report. 657. Japan would like to clarify our position that access to medicines is indeed an important issue. In order to address the issue, the Japanese Government has been working on important projects through working with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and collaborating with the Global Health Innovative Technology (GHIT) Fund. This includes support for R&D activities involving pharmaceuticals for developing countries and capacity building to improve administering policies on health. 658. Nonetheless, while the High-Level Panel has set a goal to reach "fundamental solutions" for the issue of access to medicines, its mandate seems to be narrow, focusing only on so-called "policy incoherencies between the justifiable rights of inventors, international human rights law, trade rules and public health in the context of health technologies". 659. This delegation believes that the issue of access to medicines could most effectively be dealt with by taking a more comprehensive approach including enhancing government policies for medicine prices, eliminating taxes and tariffs imposed on essential drugs and rectifying anti-competitive practices and so on. In other words, our experiences with previous efforts have identified multiple factors other than intellectual property that have a strong correlation to a major part of this issue. Our approach should focus on these factors. Furthermore, Japan would like to point out that the recommendation of this report neither reflects the opinions of, nor has been endorsed by, Members working to solve the issue by supporting global health. 660. In conclusion, this delegation is of the view that the issue of access to medicines could most effectively be dealt with through a more comprehensive approach, including enhancing government policies for medicine prices, eliminating taxes and tariffs imposed on essential drugs and so on. In other words, our experiences with previous efforts have identified much proven factors as IP that has a strong correlation to a measured part of this issue. Our approach should focus on these factors. 661. Furthermore, Japan would like to point out that the recommendation of this Report neither reflects the opinion of, nor has been endorsed by Members working to solve the issue by supporting global health. 662. In conclusion, this delegation is of the view that the issue of access of medicines should most effectively be dealt with through a more comprehensive approach based on the accumulation of previous discussion and reports, such as a joint research conducted by WHO/WTO/WIPO.

The Council took note of the statements made and agreed to take the matter up as an ad hoc agenda item at its next meeting.

70. The Chairman said that Brazil, China, India and South Africa had requested that this item be added to the agenda. They had submitted a communication that briefly introduced the item, circulated in document IP/C/W/619.

71. The representatives of India, Brazil, South Africa, China, Ecuador, Egypt, Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Russian Federation, the United States, Canada, the European Union, Chile, Australia, Switzerland, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Plurinational State of Bolivia and Norway took the floor.

72. The representatives of the Holy See, WHO, UNCTAD, and UNAIDS took the floor.

73. The representative of the Secretariat took the floor.

74. The Council took note of the statements made and agreed to take the matter up as an ad hoc agenda item at its next meeting.

IP/C/M/83, IP/C/M/83/Add.1