GDP Center Establishes Working Group on Trade Treaties & Access to Medicines
The recently established United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have put global health at the center of the global development agenda. While there have been decades of discussion on the trade regime and access to medicines, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) bring a renewed sense of importance and urgency to the debate. SDG goal number 3 seeks to “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.” Under that rubric, the SDGs outline an important pathway to achieve that goal, aiming to “achieve universal health coverage, including access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.”
The Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center (GDP Center) seeks to establish a high-level working group on trade, intellectual property rules, and access to medicines with the objective to develop a research agenda that will allow international policy-makers, national governments, and associated stakeholders to evaluate and address progress and pitfalls toward ensuring that the trade regime provides the proper incentives for universal access to medicines in low- and middle-income countries.
As a first effort toward the establishment of a working group, Boston University’s GDP Center held a workshop titled “Rethinking Trade Treaties and Access to Medicines: Toward a Policy Oriented Research Agenda for the Sustainable Development Goals” on March 21, 2019 at Boston University’s Washington, DC offices. The initial workshop focused on identifying knowledge gaps in the evaluation of the compatibility of the trade regime with the ability of nation-states to implement policies for universal access to medicines at the national level and that will help stakeholders calibrate the trade regime toward meeting SDG 3. The workshop featured distinguished panelists from all over the world, including China, Australia, the U.K., and Brazil.
