79th WHA Individual Statements
Agenda item 15.5: Economics of health for all
Market-driven R&D cannot address the needs of many marginalized communities, leaving innovation gaps for diseases with little or uncertain commercial return, such as NTDs and antimicrobial resistant infections.
Governments play a critical role in ensuring public investments in health innovation deliver public value. DNDi supports directing innovation, particularly publicly funded innovation, towards public health priorities.
Conditions on public funding for innovation could help ensure the development of, and equitable access to, health technologies. We urge Member States to implement Article 9.5 of the Pandemic Agreement by establishing policies on conditions for publicly funded research. We also emphasize the need for policies that embed equity and affordability into the innovation process from the start, including in priority setting, partnership models, open science, pro-access licensing, and technology transfer arrangements.