Access to Medicines

Access to affordable medicines, diagnostics, vaccines and other health technologies of good quality is an essential component of the right to health and the right to the benefits of scientific progress. It is a core obligation of countries to provide essential medicines as defined by WHO.

The UNDP, WHO and University of Oxford Global Dashboard for Vaccine Equity shows that COVID-19 vaccine inequity will have a lasting and profound impact on socio-economic recovery in LMICs. The COVID-19 pandemic gaps in equitable access extend beyond vaccines and include other health technologies such as diagnostics and treatments.

Responses to pandemics and other health priorities can be hindered by national and regional laws and policies that may not support or are, in fact, contradictory to the goal of ensuring rapid innovation, access and delivery of health technologies. On the other hand, well-designed policies and laws can help to build and sustain systems to address and manage the pandemic prevention and response and Universal Health Coverage, and can complement and reinforce global efforts to increase equitable access to diagnostics, vaccines, and treatments.

There has been a long-standing recognition of the need for coherent policy and legal frameworks that support equitable access to health technologies. The Global Commission on HIV and the Law, and the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines are two global independent bodies that evaluated lessons learned and recommended the creation of coherent legal and policy strategies to advance access to health technologies

UNDP support countries in the strengthening of capacities that promote policy coherence and create enabling legal and policy environments that promote access to medicines and other health technologies. In addition to technical assistance and capacity building at country request, UNDP aims at thought and strategic leadership in this area of work – through development of guidance documents and other knowledge products as resources for use by government stakeholders, development partners and civil society.

Examples of country support include the following:

• UNDP partnered with the government of Kazakhstan, through a project supported by the World Bank in developing a national Intellectual Property strategy and crafting strategic approaches to intellectual property protection, which incorporated the TRIPS flexibilities also to facilitate access to medicines and health technologies. The Law of Kazakhstan on patents was amended in June 2022, adopting the key approaches proposed in the national IP strategy, including limiting the scope of people and organizations that can be patent representatives, capping the opportunities for extension of petty patents, excluding diagnostic methods, methods of human cloning and clones, methods for altering the genetic integrity of human cells from patentability, introducing rules for invalidation of Eurasian patents.
• In Malawi, UNDP has supported the government technical working group tasked with the review of the national patent law, identified as a key follow up to the high-level regional meeting on policy coherence in the ARIPO region for access to health technologies in late 2017.
• In Malawi and Uganda, UNDP recently initiated a project aimed at increasing access to treatment and care for people living with diabetes and other NCDs. The project will help develop and implement Legal Environment Assessments (LEAs) that will help drive evidenced-based government decision-making on access to treatment and care.
• In Namibia, UNDP has worked with the government in the amendment and implementation of the national competition law to increase access to medicines.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted increasing inequities in the access to a range of health technologies for an effective pandemic response. A diverse toolkit of legal and policy interventions is needed to increase access. Interventions aimed at strengthening the access and delivery value chain at the national level are crucial to address the capacity gaps for rapid approval and delivery. There is also increasing focus on technology transfer and local production of health technologies as means of increasing access. UNDP plays an active role within global initiatives aimed at facilitating effective technology transfer and local production, as well as supporting government efforts. For example, since 2019, UNDP has provided technical assistance and support to the Ministry of Investment, Industry and Trade (MIIT) in Tanzania in its efforts to developing a national strategy aimed at promoting the development of the domestic pharmaceutical sector.

Additional guidance to support this area of work are also available through resources listed below:

• Report of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law