Permanent Mission of India 

Geneva

Intervention by India on Agenda Item 8.3 - Addressing the global shortage of medicines and vaccines at the 140^th Session of Executive Board of the WHO delivered by Shri. Amal Pusp, Director, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on 26 January 2017

Mr. Chairman,

We fully support the proposal for addressing the concerns relating to shortage of vaccine and medicines, including development of a global medicines shortage notification system that would include information for better detection and understanding the causes of medicine shortage. We would like to place on record a few comments on the said report.

The present   WHO report discusses shortages largely in terms of malfunctions in the supply chain. This definition implicitly excludes innovation failure, strategic choices by manufacturers to discontinue the production of less profitable drugs, market distortions and price barriers to procurement. Price barriers may include IP provisions, unreasonably stringent regulatory standards and lack of competition. In this context, we would like to refer to the UNSG High Level Panel Report on Access to Medicines, which interalia recommended that: Governments should require manufacturers and distributors of health technologies to disclose to drug regulatory and procurement authorities information pertaining to : (1) the costs of R&D, production, marketing and distribution of health technology; and (2) any public funding received in the development of the health technology including tax credits, subsidies and grants. These recommendations are very much relevant to the development of this report.

We would suggest that WHO should establish and maintain an accessible international database of prices of patented and generic medicines and biosimilars in the private and public sectors of all countries where they are registered.

We would request the Secretariat to develop a report, based on a broader view of the cause of shortages including price etc., rather than focus solely on supply chain malfunctions.

Finally, we would like to emphasize that the development of technical definitions of medicines and vaccine shortages and stockouts, in terms of WHA Resolution 69.25, must take due account of issues relating to access and affordability, since addressing the problem of access to medicines is more critical rather than just addressing shortages. 

We hope that the EB will take note of these observations of our delegation and will request WHO to take corrective steps accordingly. 

With these words, I thank you Mr. Chairman.