The only way to have anything remotely equal in terms of access to medicines is to fundamentally change the way we finance biomedical R&D. Specifically, we need to progressively delink the incentives to invest in biomedical R&D from the grant of temporary monopolies. Legal monopolies on medicines predictably lead to high prices and appalling inequalities of access and outcomes.

The WHO Secretariat should reach out to experts to determine the methodology for evaluating the feasibility of progressively introducing market entry rewards as the alternative incentive mechanism, one to provide robust financial rewards to successful developers of novel drugs, while allowing products to be manufactured and sold at low generic prices.