C-TAP Second Anniversary Panel Discussion Webinar
The WHO COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (WHO C-TAP), on its second-year anniversary, would like to kindly invite you to participate in a Panel Discussion Webinar to stimulate the debate on advancing C-TAP’s ability to promote equitable access to COVID-19 health technologies. The Secretariat will brief on progress, challenges and opportunities and distinguished speakers and panelists will share their views on how to make C-TAP more attractive to technology holders based on the findings from two discussion papers on access provisions in funding agreements and incentives, prepared by the Secretariat and their experiences working in these domains.
Date: 16th June 2022 from 14:00 – 16:00, CET.
Format: Panel and open discussion. The session will be Livestreamed for Member States, media and WHO staff.
Invitees/participants: Member States, international organizations, funders, academics, industry, and civil society organizations.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://who.zoom.us/j/93282389813
Meeting ID: 932 8238 9813
Password: M?4UpD6W
Objective
In May 2020, WHO and partners launched the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) to facilitate timely, equitable and affordable access of COVID-19 health products. C-TAP provides a global one-stop shop for developers of COVID-19 therapeutics, diagnostics, vaccines and other health products to voluntarily share their intellectual property, knowledge, and data, with quality-assured manufacturers through public health-driven and transparent licenses.
Pooling COVID-19 health technologies or products can promote innovation or further development and facilitate scale up production through multiple manufacturers that currently have untapped capacity to scale up and diversify production.
C-TAP’s priority in the last two years has been engagement with technology holders to encourage sharing of intellectual property, know-how or data to promote global equitable access of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics or other medical devices. While recent licenses indicate the potential of the mechanism to promote access and innovation, significant challenges remain in realizing the full potential of C-TAP.
The purpose of this open webinar is to stimulate discussion on advancing C-TAP’s ability to promote equitable access to COVID-19 health technologies, informed by two papers prepared by the C-TAP Secretariat.
The first paper reviews existing literature on technology transfer and affordable access in funding agreements in the context of medical products to address pandemic diseases. The review focuses on specific contractual terms and conditions and associated policies related to the funding of research and development (R&D), clinical trials, and the manufacturing of medical products, particularly those needed to respond to international public health crises.
The second paper provides in a first section a summary of responses by Member States to a WHO C-TAP incentive questionnaire. The questionnaire listed a set of measures that could be implemented by Member States to encourage technology holders to pool technologies through C-TAP. The listed measures pertain to the areas of government procedures, market access, regulatory requirements, and subsidies or cash payments. The second part of the paper includes a review based on academic papers, conferences, and any other publicly available resource that was undertaken by C-TAP Secretariat to complement and facilitate the discussion.
Distinguished panelists will share their views on how to make C-TAP more attractive to technology holders based on the findings from the two papers and their experiences working in these domains. All participants will then be invited to make comments or ask questions to the speakers and panelists.
Programme
| 14:00 – 14:15 | Welcome Dr. Mariangela SIMÃO, WHO Assistant Director General on Access to Medicines and Health Products Division |
| | Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General Ambassador Catalina Devandas – Permanent Mission Costa Rica Padmashree Gehl Sampath, Chair of C-TAP Technical Advisory Group (TAG) |
Panel I: Access provisions in health R&D funding agreements
| 14:15 – 14:30 | Overview of C-TAP paper on access provisions in health R&D funding agreements Joshua Sarnoff – WHO C-TAP Consultant |
| 14:30 – 15:05 | Panel discussion |
| | Moderator: Suerie Moon, Graduate Institute Switzerland - Wellcome Trust – Rachael Hore (5’) - Unitaid - Tenu Avafia (5’) - CEPI (tbc) (5’) - DNDi - Michelle Childs (5’) - UNDP – Cecilia Oh (5’) - Q&A (10’) |
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Panel II: Further incentives for technology holder’s sharing through WHO C-TAP
| 15:05 – 15:20 | Summary of Member State responses to WHO C-TAP incentive questionnaire and supplemental literature review - Erika Duenas – WHO C-TAP Secretariat |
| 15:20 – 15:55 | Panel discussion |
| | Moderator: Amb. Shara Duncan – Costa Rica Mission - Spanish Research Institute (CSIC) – Ana Castro (5’) - US NIH – Mark Rohrbaugh (5’) - South Centre – Carlos Correa (5’) - Industry representative - (tbc) (5’) - KEI - Luis Gil (5’) - Q&A (10’) |
| 15:55 – 16:00 | Concluding remarks: Charles Gore, Executive Director – Medicines Patent Pool |
