World Health Assembly Approves Milestone Resolution On Price Transparency
CANSA was represented by the Cancer Alliance, of which it is a member, at the World Health Assembly, helping to get the resolution passed:
28 May 2019 – The World Health Assembly today approved a milestone resolution to support greater public disclosure of prices for medicines and other health products – capping a nail-biting series of negotiations that continued until the very moment the measure came to the floor.
Senior WHO officials called it a landmark measure, which could have a lasting impact on lowering prices in markets for urgently-needed health products, ranging from treatments for cancer and hepatitis, to insulin, which today are unaffordable in many low- and middle-income countries.
WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Gheyebresus called the resolution a “landmark agreement to enhance the transparency of pricing for medicines, vaccines and other health products,” in his closing remarks before the close of the WHA today, just an hour after the vote.
The language of the resolution asks WHO member states to: “Take appropriate measures to publicly share information on the net prices of health products,” which it defines as the “net price or effective price or net transaction price or manufacturer selling price [that] is the amount received by manufacturers after subtraction of all rebates, discounts, and other incentives.”
This resolution is an important first step in making markets more transparent, and is the beginning rather than the end of a process.
