Good Practice Guide: Improving Access to Treatment by Utilizing Public Health Flexibilities in the WTO TRIPS Agreement

In the context of impressive achievement and daunting goals in the HIV field, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) developed the Good Practice Guide on improving access to treatment by utilizing WTO TRIPS flexibilities. It is UNDP’s mandate to provide capacity development support to governments to implement good practices in intellectual property law and policy with focus on public health and south-south cooperation. This Guide could be used as an instrument that can support national initiatives for protecting, upholding and fulfilling the universal right to the best attainable standards of health, as enshrined in international treaties and many national constitutions. The Good Practice Guide analyses each of the public health flexibilities in the TRIPS Agreement and provides examples where and how have they been used by national governments. The Guide also provides some examples on the effect of adopting intellectual property protection measures, which exceed the minimum requirements of TRIPS and which are often introduced through bilateral trade instruments. An extensive bibliography allows further research on any of these matters.