The Executive Board of the World Health Organisation is meeting next week amid apprehensions that it would re-open the IMPACT-sponsored anti-counterfeit medicines issue, along with the scheduled agenda of discussing topics of financing to research for neglected diseases, regulatory harmonization and pandemic influenza.

As the board meets from January 18 in the run-up to the world health assembly scheduled in May, what can cause concern to countries like India mainly is the anti-counterfeit issue though it is not on official agenda. It is learnt that a new report on counterfeit medicines is likely to be presented in the meeting. At the last executive meeting, the report by the International Medical Products Anti-Counterfeiting Task Force (IMPACT) had become controversial and finally the attempt to redefine the counterfeit was aborted, mainly because of strong resistance from countries like India and Brazil.

The official agenda of the meeting is to discuss mainly the ways to fund research of drugs for neglected disease based on the report of an expert working group. The working group has suggested many proposals to find finances for the research. The public interest groups have already raised concerns about the proposals also which they claimed to be in line with the thinking of big pharmaceutical companies. India will also be keenly watching on the fate of some of the proposals.

According to the expert group report, there is a need for new donor funds for health research. “This mechanism considers three main sources of funding: additional funding from new donors, non traditional donors, who are not currently included in OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC), such as China, India and Venezuela; additional funding from existing DAC donors (for example, earmarking a percentage of GDP for health research and development); and additional funding from philanthropic organizations,” the report said.

A new indirect tax and voluntary contributions are also among the main proposals for financing the research. The expert group was asked to suggest innovative sources for financing the research as at present only very little was spent on developing drugs for neglected diseases.