Title: Side Event to the 71st World Health Assembly, on Access to Medicines: Overcoming Obstacles created by monopolies – Essential to UHC and the 2030 Agenda
Date: 25 May 2018
Venue: Room VIII, Palais des Nations, Geneva
Organizers: Missions of Brazil, India, Morocco, Senegal, and Thailand, with the support of the South Centre
Digital economy is a given, as much as industrialization was inevitable on invention of means of incorporating steam and later fossil fuel and electric power into manufacturing. It is not a matter of being for or against it. It is about what kind of digital economy we should have. A development agenda for digital economy needs to be articulated, based on a narrative that takes proper account of developing country interests. (more…)
Major Outcomes of the 71st Session of the World Health Assembly of WHO
By Nirmalya Syam and Mirza Alas
The 71st session of the World Health Assembly (WHA) of the World Health Organization (WHO) took place from 21 to 26 May 2018 in Geneva, Switzerland. The Assembly adopted several decisions and resolutions including the adoption of the General Programme of Work (GPW) of WHO for the period 2019-2023, as well as decisions on addressing access to medicines and vaccines and their global shortage, and the recommendations of an overall programme review of the WHO Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property (GSPA-PHI). (more…)
South Centre Statement at the Meeting of Ministers of Health of the Member States of the Non-Aligned Movement
The South Centre reiterates its commitment to support the Non-Aligned countries so that there is close and effective cooperation among developing countries to strengthen a global health agenda. WHO was created as an international public agency in the service of global health. Recovering and reinforcing this role should be the work of all.
The IP Negotiations Monitor summarizes the latest developments in multilateral and regional fora where intellectual property negotiations are taking place, and informs on upcoming meetings and events.
This update provides a snapshot of the activities of the Development, Innovation and Intellectual Property Programme during the month of February 2018.
Recent news about the collusion of Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and the Trump election has brought forward one of the more covert and often insufficiently discussed problem of Social Media platforms to the fore. Instead of calling out Facebook alone, I prefer to use Social Media platforms as the problems related to big data enterprise and privacy are as much a Twitter/Whatsapp/Instagram/Snapchat issue as it is for Facebook.
Yet right now Facebook is being attacked from left, right and center by everyone including their own ilk. The question this merits is whether the data problems with the Social Media platforms are only limited to explicitly share data (which Facebook is being blamed for) or is it also about the (more often used) method of implicitly acquiring and utilizing user information? (more…)