WHO bridges rich-poor intellectual property split

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization's member governments overcame a rich-poor rift over how to manage intellectual property on Saturday and endorsed a strategy to help developing countries access more life-saving medicines.

At the United Nations agency's annual policy-setting meeting in Geneva, governments also called for WHO Director-General Margaret Chan to finalize a plan of action boosting incentives for drug makers to tackle diseases that mainly afflict the poor.

"This is a major breakthrough for public health that will benefit many millions of people for many years to come," Chan said at the end of the week-long World Health Assembly meetings.

The intellectual property resolution requests that Chan, who succeeded Lee Jong-wook as WHO chief in 2006, "finalize urgently the outstanding components of the plan of actions, including time-frames, progress indications and estimated funding needs."

Those will be reviewed at the next WHO assembly in May 2009.

Public health activists applauded the hard-fought consensus reached by the 190 countries represented in the Geneva talks.

"The WHO has taken a big step forward to change the way we think about innovation and access to medicines," said James Love of Knowledge Ecology International, who noted accord "on topics that were considered controversial only a short time ago."

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said it was pleased with the WHO's efforts to tackle intellectual property, which spans patents, copyright and trademarks.