What is IGWG ?

What is the Intergovernmental Working Group?
The Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property, or IGWG, was established by member countries of the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2006 to tackle the problems with the current access to medicines and research and development (R&D) environments.

Representatives from the Ministries of Health of countries came together at the IGWG in November 2007 to look into how research and development is financed, how it is prioritised, and what the consequences and the shortfalls of the current system are.  They also came up with a plan of action to address what needs to change so that medical innovation does lead to newer better and more affordable drugs, diagnostics and vaccines that target the diseases that most affect the poor.

The working group is groundbreaking as it is the first high level international body to consider both R&D and access to medicines issues at the same time.   The problems with medical innovation and access to medicines are interlinked: addressing that link is crucial if we are to solve those problems.

What is wrong with the current R&D and access to medicines framework?
The current way drugs are developed means that major diseases that affect people living in developing countries are neglected.  In today’s model, the cost of researching and developing medicines is paid for through drug prices.  This means that research is steered towards areas where the profit rewards are the greatest, so diseases which predominantly affect the poor are neglected.  

Read more about the problems with today’s R&D agenda here.

At the same time, patents are used to sustain artificially high prices for medicines, so many in need are quite simply priced out of the market.  

Médecins Sans Frontières teams around the world see the consequences of this every day – the lack of good, adapted tuberculosis drugs or tests, or the high price of some newer antiretrovirals to treat HIV/AIDS, are just some examples.

Read more about the gaps in medical innovation today here.

So what is the IGWG going to do about it?
The IGWG has the potential to change these problems.

The group’s mandate is to produce a new plan of action for research and development that prioritizes the health needs of developing countries, that has sustainable funding, and helps provide effective, affordable and medicines, diagnostics and vaccines.


What has Médecins Sans Frontières been doing at IGWG?
MSF’s involvement with the IGWG stems from the frustration of our field doctors unable to treat patients because the drugs available to them are all too often either ineffective, ill-adapted or too expensive – that is when they exist at all.

We believe the IGWG has the potential to change this.  MSF therefore has been bringing its medical experience, as well as its analysis of different drug and diagnostic research pipelines to the attention of government and WHO representatives at the IGWG.

In 2006, MSF submitted an official position paper outlining our experiences in the gaps in R&D and the problems of access to medicines.  MSF also participated in a public hearing organised by WHO and commented on the “Draft global strategy and plan of action” in November 2007.

Read more about the progress of the IGWG negotiations