WTO
BETTER ACCESS FOR RESEARCHERS, OR BETTER ACCESS FOR CITIZENS?
Seeing as there was only one topic, Intellectual Property on Access to Healthcare, the committee immediately initiated debate on the aforementioned topic. In this first session, the delegates spoke about their positions on the issue, as well as proposing initial solutions. The committee was immediately divided on whether they should prioritize patents vs access. The United states of America wanted to find a middle ground between patenting and affordable medicine, but believed patenting should be the priority to assure medical research in the future. Germany proposed a reduced patent time, as well as establishing a protocol for international intervention in the case of a health crisis, to which India responded with a counter-proposal lowering intellectual property prices. Venezuela proposed monopolizing the pharmaceutical industry to create affordable medicine for everyone globally, which made way for the following debate: whether intellectual property benefited countries, the people or individual pharmaceutical organizations.
This debate helped the issue of whether healthcare should be seen as a necessity or as a business to be assessed, as well as the need to invest on healthcare, and who should be the investors: businesses or governments. To this, Mexico proposed a healthcare convention.
The debate turned over to the issue of how to make medicine affordable to people, but also make sure that the researchers received adequate revenue for their work; a couple of solutions were proposed for this problematic, such as creating special licenses for countries that can’t afford the patents at their original prices.
It was suggested that TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) created dependence on other countries and developing countries can’t create their own research, seeing as they don’t have access to the same resources. This lead to debate on whether the current actions were capitalist, and if the main drive for the researchers and the pharmaceutical organizations was money, and not providing adequate healthcare.
The committee proposed implementing control measures for certain products to secure easy access, but others that need further and more complex research to be created should maintain their prices as seen fit. This also brought up the question of what should be done about generic brands, seeing as they are more affordable than their brand-name counterparts. A consensus was reached that establishing protocols for the determination of research and product costs was top priority, and thus, the committee started thriving towards agreeing on a single solution that benefitted both the researchers and the buyers.
Initially, the problem was focused mainly on how to help underdeveloped countries, however, China stated that the inability to access certain product also affects people in developed countries.