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WHO/WTO WORKSHOP ON DIFFERENTIAL PRICING AND FINANCING OF
ESSENTIAL DRUGS, HØSBJØR 2001 WTO, WHO secretariats workshop on affordable drugs 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. |
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Programme
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to top 18:00 Reception and Buffet Dinner
Monday, 9 April 2001: 09:00-10:00 - Opening Session - Welcome and keynote remarks
10:00-12:30 - coffee break
Session I - Access to Essential Drugs in Poor Countries: Key Issues This session will examine the range of obstacles to adequate access to essential drugs in developing countries, including issues of financing, pricing, supply, selection and distribution. It will, amongst other things, seek to examine the respective importance of the various factors, including the significance of patent protection.
12:30-14:00 lunch 14:00-15:30 - Session II The Role of Financing in Ensuring Access to Essential Drugs This session will consider 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.
15:30-16:00 - coffee break 16:00-18:00 - Session III Differential Pricing: Concepts and Issues This session will seek 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:
Tuesday, 10 April 2001: 08:30-10:30 - Session IV Current Experience with differential pricing The purpose of this session is 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.
10:30-11:00 - coffee break 11:00-12:30 - Session V Market Segmentation: techniques, actors and incentives This session will seek 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 will be the extent to which competition law puts constraints on the use of market segmentation techniques. Marketing strategies by manufacturers and contractual approaches:
Governmental measures:
12:30-14:00 - lunch 14:00-15:30 - Session V (continued) The use of intellectual property rights:
Competition policy considerations:
15:30-16:00 - coffee break 16:00-17:30 - Session VI Purchaser Perspectives and Incentives for Differential Pricing This session will consider the perspectives of purchasers in high and low income markets and consider their influence on the price of essential drugs. It will ask whether differential pricing for low income countries will put downward pressure on prices in industrialized countries even with market segmentation. It will consider existing and potential fiscal and other incentives for companies to implement differential pricing.
Wednesday, 11 April 2001: 09:00-10:30 - Session VII Perspectives on Financing and Differential Pricing This session will provide 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 to be considered will be how to deal with problems of the political acceptability in developed country markets of lower prices in developing countries.
10:30-11:00 coffee break 11:00-12:00 Session VIII Perspectives on Financing and Differential Pricing
12h:00-13:00 - Session IX Round-up Discussion
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Background: Ensuring
access to essential drugs includes issues of selection,
affordability, financing, and health systems. Within this
context, the purpose of the workshop is to analyse
factors related to financing and differential pricing of
essential drugs. Financing considerations include the
requirements and mechanisms for securing adequate amounts
through international and domestic sources. |
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