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TRIPS: WHO/WTO WORKSHOP ON DIFFERENTIAL PRICING AND FINANCING OF ESSENTIAL DRUGS, HØSBJØR 2001

The presentations

Download the texts or PowerPoint slides presented at the workshop. These files are presentations that the speakers have sent to us and authorized us to distribute. Almost all the presentations are here. We are still checking to see if any more presentations can be distributed. They will be posted here when they are made available to us.

> See also final report


> Consult the guide to
downloading files.



Background:

The 8-11 April 2001 meeting in Høsbjør, Norway, brought together about 80 experts from industrialized and developing countries. It was organized jointly by the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry and the Global Health Council, a broad-based US organization in the healthcare field.

> More information on TRIPS

Opening Session

  • Sigrun Møgedal, State Secretary of International Development, Norway: Opening statement (MS Word, 2 pages, 27.5KB)(pdf, 14KB)
  • Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General, WHO — Opening remarks (browse)
  • Adrian Otten, WTO Secretariat — Introductory remarks (browse)
  • Nils Daulaire, President, Global Health Council: Opening statement (MS Word, 2 pages, 27.5KB)(pdf, 7KB)
  • Peter Piot, Executive Director, UNAIDS: Opening statement (MS Word, 5 pages, 119KB)(pdf,  51KB)


Session I — Access to Essential Drugs in Low Income Countries: Key Issues
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This session examined the range of obstacles to adequate access to essential drugs in developing countries, including issues of financing, pricing, supply, selection and distribution. It, amongst other things, sought to examine the respective importance of the various factors, including the significance of patent protection.


Session II — The Role of Financing in Ensuring Access to Essential Drugs
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This session considered the financing needs for ensuring adequate access to essential drugs in developing countries, even in an environment of differential pricing, and how such financing can be mobilized.


Session III — Differential Pricing: Concepts and Issues
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This session sought to identify key issues that need to be explored in regard to differential pricing of essential drugs, whether patented or generic, and to examine what economic analysis can tell us about whether, and under what conditions, differential pricing can be a win-win policy and to what extent there could be losers.

Economic analysis

Conceptual issues


Session IV — Current Experience with Differential Pricing
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The purpose of this session was to examine to what extent differential pricing occurs already and what can be learnt from this experience, for example in regard to techniques for ensuring market segmentation and managing reactions in industrial countries.


Session V — Market Segmentation: Techniques, Actors and Incentives
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This session sought to examine the different ways in which the segmentation of markets necessary for differential pricing can be made effective, taking into account the need to ensure consistency with WTO and other international trade rules. Also considered were the extent to which competition law puts constraints on the use of market segmentation techniques.

Marketing strategies by manufacturers and contractual approaches

Governmental measures

The use of intellectual property rights

Competition policy considerations


Session VI — Purchaser Perspectives and Incentives for Differential Pricing

This session considered the perspectives of purchasers in high and low income markets and consider their influence on the price of essential drugs. It asked whether differential pricing for low income countries will put downward pressure on prices in industrialized countries even with market segmentation. It considered existing and potential fiscal and other incentives for companies to implement differential pricing.


Session VII — Perspectives on Financing and Differential Pricing
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This session provided an opportunity for a range of views on the issues under discussion in the Workshop to be provided from different perspectives, and for general discussion of these matters. Among the questions considered were how to deal with problems of the political acceptability in developed country markets of lower prices in developing countries.


Closing remarks