COVID-19: WHO Supports Pooling Of Rights, MPP Includes Drugs and Tests

Intellectual property rights are in the spotlight again, after the World Health Organization and the Medicines Patent Pool announced initiatives to help ensure that all countries will be able to access products being developed for COVID-19.

Covid19_Night_Map
The WHO initiative is seeking to make COVID-19 technologies accessible to all countries • Source: Shutterstock

The World Health Organization has endorsed an initiative to create a voluntary pool of intellectual property rights to tests, medicines and vaccines for COVID-19 so that products developed to tackle the coronavirus pandemic are shared equitably with all countries.

In addition, the board of the Medicines Patent Pool has said it would temporarily include medicines and diagnostics for COVID-19 in its licensing pool – and that the MPP was

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