In December the UNITAID board met to discuss the patent pool proposal and made a ground breaking decision to take the proposal forward.

So what exactly was agreed, and what is the way forward?

By the end of February UNITAID will have had another meeting where it will discuss and agree where the patent pool will be set up, i.e. In Europe or the USA—this is important as it will affect communications with the pharmaceutical companies, and they will appoint an interim board to take the patent pool forward over the next year.

Then this interim board will begin to start discussions with pharmaceutical companies and other big players about how the patent pool will work and what a fair royalty payment is.

This is a crucial period and one which the Student Stop AIDS Campaign will be watching with deep interest. At the February training the Student Stop AIDS Campaign will be discussing in detail what we will do over the next 9 months to support this process and ensure that pressure is maintained on the pharmaceutical companies.

Ultimately the fight isn’t over yet, as the conditions of the December meeting means that the progression of the patent pool will be reviewed in December 2010, and if it hasn’t taken significant steps forward then the whole process could stop!

We will continue to keep you updated with what is happening and the outcome of the discussions at the February annual training if you aren’t able to attend.

Watch this space!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 6:02 pm and is filed under Campaign News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.