Pharmaceutical Patents: An Emerging Global Health Problem - Essay Example

There is an emerging apprehension that, with the enactment of the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), pharmaceutical patents will limit or hamper the movement of medical technologies and medicines worldwide (Sampat 2010). Commercial firms are at present forcefully demanding intellectual property securities in LDCs, numerous of which had not permitted patents on medicines in the past (Sampat 2010). The apprehension is that without general competition, the availability of medicines will deteriorate.

            Recently, global public health has been regarded as an important catalyst of sustainable human development. However, organizing a united movement toward the visions of global health is challenging, because LDCs do not have the needed resources. The global emphasis on pharmaceutical regulations and, specifically, on drugs and intellectual property rights (ITR) has been led by deliberations over access to medications in LDCs and the insufficiency of financial support for research and development to deal with ignored and tropical illnesses (Koivusalo 2010). These apprehensions were demonstrated in the agreements prior to the Doha Declaration of WTO on public health (Koivusalo 2010, 395): the development of global programs, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, tackling access to medications for these three illnesses; and the effort of the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation, and Public Health of the World Health Organization (WHO).

            Nevertheless, although the granting of further financial support for addressing malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS and the venture in R&D in mistreated illnesses are definitely imperative, such financial assistances alone are not enough to deal with global health issues. Insufficient research and development and access to medications are normally regarded as issues that exist only in relation to particular illnesses and only in the most impoverished LDCs, and which can be mitigated through an enhanced provision of assistance without additional alterations to industrial regulations, commerce, and innovation worldwide (Sampat 2010). However, this strategy is becoming weak. As mentioned by Koivusalo (2010), developing nations like Thailand and Brazil, for instance, have been involved in legal debate for their attempts to guarantee access to inexpensive medications to their citizens, while the relationship between the pricing of drugs and intellectual property rights is an issue for a growing number of nations.  

            Therefore, in order to realize more just global health results, health approaches should be motivated by the main concerns of public health and should consider more general health policy conditions, such as the requirements of certain national health institutions. Governments that successfully protect the wellbeing of the global pharmaceutical industry globally could actually weaken the preferences of their health institutions and the public, who may gain from better government involvement in pharmaceutical pricing and regulations (Koivusalo 2010).