I am pleased to welcome you at the WTO for what will certainly be a very dense programme to which you will be exposed in the course of this week, but hopefully also an inspiring training activity that can assist you in your day-to-day work back in capital. It is very encouraging to see that it has been possible to bring together such an eminent group of experts both from capitals and missions in Geneva, often in decision-making positions, who have in-depth knowledge of the many dimensions that are directly relevant for the interface between trade and health.

The Workshop on Trade and Public Health has been conceived in order to build your capacity to analyse policy choices where trade, intellectual property and public health come together to achieve the best possible outcome for public health. This week's programme therefore aims at providing you with the most comprehensive understanding of the various policy dimensions as they affect public health, and how these relate to multilateral trade agreements.

The idea of looking at public health as it relates to other policy dimensions is, of course, not new. This Workshop can thus build on the experience of the series of earlier activities organized by the WTO Secretariat since 2005 that were looking specifically at the issues located at the crossroad between intellectual property and public health.

In line with the more recent discussions that we have witnessed in the TRIPS Council and elsewhere, the outcome of past workshops has, however, highlighted the need to move from a highly specialized training towards a capacity building activity that looks at trade and public health in a more holistic manner. By doing so, this Workshop, as it has been redesigned since last year, responds to the more complex policy environment that decision-makers are required to work with in preparing practical responses to contemporary challenges in the field of public health. This is impressively documented by the mere number of topics that more than 30 speakers have been asked to cover in the course of this week.

While much of the emphasis of this week's programme still is on access and innovation in relation to medical technologies, you will thus notice the inclusion of an important number of wider trade and health policy matters. These include public health determinants, pricing and procurement policies, competition policy and rules, tariffs, health services, health-related measures under the TBT and SPS Agreements, as well as regulatory issues to ensure access to safe, high quality and effective medicines. All of these aspects need to be adequately addressed in order to provide you with an operational set of tools and options that will allow you to address concrete problems back home.

In addition, this year's Workshop is somewhat special as it takes place alongside with two major public events that are jointly organized by the WHO, WIPO and the WTO also in the course of this week, i.e. the Symposium on "Public Health, Intellectual Property and TRIPS at 20: Innovation and Access to Medicines; Learning from the Past, Illuminating the Future" on Wednesday, as well as the technical Workshop on Patentability Criteria on Tuesday afternoon. You will thus be offered the unique opportunity to attend both activities which form an integral part of this Workshop.

As you will have noted in the programme, the Workshop has been put together and will be delivered in close collaboration with our sister organizations, the World Health Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Collectively, we have made huge efforts to consolidate the most pertinent material relating to the interface between trade and public health. These efforts base our respective capacity building activities on a better informed factual background. They are made in recognition of the complementary role played by the three organizations that needs to be equally mirrored at domestic level through collaboration between different government departments in charge of health, trade or intellectual property.

Among the fruits of this intense collaboration is the WHO-WIPO-WTO Study on "Promoting Access to Medical Technologies and Innovation: Intersections Between Public Health, Intellectual Property and Trade" that was launched by the three organizations in February 2013. It emphasizes the need to adopt a holistic and coherent approach and consequently looks at a wide range of relevant tools and instruments. The study is a continuation of the spirit and letter of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, but also reaffirms the strength of today's collaboration of the three key international organizations dealing with the interface between health, trade and intellectual property.

The series of technical symposia jointly organized by the WHO, WIPO and the WTO also complement these efforts. Since 2010, they have shed light on a range of topical issues, such as pricing and procurement policies, patent information and freedom to operate, changing business models in medical innovation and challenges and opportunities for middle-income countries with respect to innovation of and access to medical technologies. The Fifth Symposium that will be held this week and that you are invited to attend will review the information base on access and innovation in medical technologies and identify possibilities and limitations for better integrating data in support of policy makers' future work.

Let me conclude by wishing you an informative week that will expose you to many key questions regarding trade agreements and public health. Given the breadth of issues to be covered, you will not have time to discuss all of them in a very detailed fashion. Therefore, you should regard this training activity only as the beginning of continuing efforts that are required in order to approach these questions from a multidimensional perspective. I encourage you to continue to deepen your knowledge and to share it with other colleagues upon your return to capital. This will surely contribute to the achievement of the most satisfactory outcomes for public health and other relevant policy dimensions in your respective countries.