The elimination of tuberculosis cannot be achieved if medicines are locked in a “patent panoply,” according to Indian author and journalist Vidya Kishnan.
Speaking to Garry Aslanyan on the most recent episode of Dialogues, a new series from the Global Health Matters podcast, the author of “Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History” said that “everything that happened in COVID has been happening for decades with TB.
The chair of the Doha fisheries subsidies negotiations at the World Trade Organization has issued a draft consolidated text aimed at a “final push” to conclude negotiations on disciplines on subsidies contributing to overcapacity and overfishing before the WTO’s 13th ministerial conference (MC13) gets underway in Abu Dhabi on 26 February 2024. by D. Ravi Kanth
The elimination of tuberculosis cannot be achieved if medicines are locked in a “patent panoply,” according to Indian author and journalist Vidya Kishnan.
Speaking to Garry Aslanyan on the most recent episode of Dialogues, a new series from the Global Health Matters podcast, the author of “Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History” said that “everything that happened in COVID has been happening for decades with TB.
by D. Ravi Kanth
At the year-end meeting of the World Trade Organization’s General Council, India apparently argued that the proposed Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) Agreement is allegedly “illegal” and cannot be placed on the agenda of the upcoming WTO's 13th ministerial conference (MC13).
An informal mini-ministerial meeting held on 27 November failed to provide any political guidance on injecting momentum into the agriculture negotiations in the run-up to the upcoming World Trade Organization’s 13th ministerial conference (MC13).
The Cairns Group of farm-exporting countries came under criticism at the Doha negotiating body on agriculture for allegedly shifting the focus of the discussions to comprehensive reform of domestic support, instead of on the issue of public stockholding programmes for food security purposes in developing countries.
The GC meeting, which continued on 14 December, appears to have cast a dark shadow on issues like the extension of the MC12 Ministerial Decision on the TRIPS Agreement to cover COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics; the proposed termination of the moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions; the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) graduation issue concerning transition support measures in favour of those LDCs that have graduated from the LDC category; and several other issues, said people who asked not to be quoted.
India on 13 December sought clarification from the World Trade Organization’s General Council (GC) chair whether the inclusion of item 18 on the GC agenda on “Information on Investment Facilitation for Development – Request from Chile and the Republic of Korea” was merely for information or any other purpose, during the adoption of the agenda.
The GC meeting, which was scheduled for 14-15 December, was advanced by a day due to a long list of items to be discussed.
Calls for reforms of the international financial architecture are becoming ever louder. Governments, UN institutions, expert groups and civil society organizations are criticizing the fact that the network of institutions and rules that currently determine global monetary and financial policy and control global financial flows are not up to the current crises. The international financial architecture is “outdated, dysfunctional and unfair”, according to UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
In view of these challenges, the UN Member States made the reform of the international financial architecture a priority topic of the UN Summit of the Future (SotF). It is due to take place at the level of Heads of State and Government in New York on 22 and 23 September 2024. The outcome will be a Pact for the Future. Its content will be negotiated in New York in the months leading up to the Summit. The following six topics are expected to be discussed in the negotiations on the global financial architecture:
i. Reforms of the international financial institutions
ii. Short-term liquidity and financial safety nets
But pending discussions and consensus on key proposals including those focused on introducing equity-related considerations to the IHR, more time has been sought to conclude the negotiations on amending these rules. In addition, critical issues such as definition of a pandemic; a tiered alert system for declaring health emergencies; and on financing mechanisms; are being addressed both in the forum to amend the IHR, and in parallel discussions towards a new Pandemic Agreement. Unless these key issues are addressed within the overall scope of governing health emergencies including also pandemics, changes to IHR cannot be approved in isolation, diplomatic sources explained to us this past week.
