After many member states led by India recently expressed concern on the delay of setting up a working group to address the problems of counterfeit and substandard medicines, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has called a meeting for the purpose from February 28 to March 2 at the headquarters.

“The Director-General of the WHO presents her compliments to member states and regional economic organisations and has the honour to inform them that in accordance with operative paragraph 2 of decision WHA63(10), the Working Group (WG) of Member States on substandard/spurious/falsely-labelled/falsified/counterfeit medical products will convene from 28 February to 2 March 2011 at WHO headquarters,’’ said an official quoting  from an official  communication by the WHO, in response to a recent news carried by the Pharmabiz on the subject.

India, along with many other countries, had recently expressed strong concern over the delay in setting up the proposed working group to address problems of counterfeit and substandard medicines and adopt changes in the policy, instead of leaving the task with controversial International Medical Products Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce (IMPACT).

India took up the matter with the WHO recently after the world agency failed to even set up the working group. The decision to set up working group was taken following sharp criticism from members led by India and Brazil over the activities of the IMPACT. The group is supposed to report back to the member countries sometime in April. Though a meeting was slated in December to form the panel, it did not take place.

At the last World Health Assembly (WHA) in May 2010, it was decided to create a “time-limited and results-oriented working group on substandard/spurious/falsely-labelled/falsified/counterfeit medical products comprised of and open to all member states.” However, with no serious efforts still on this front, the WHO has come in for flaks from many members led by India.

India also expressed concerns about the recently completed Plurilateral Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, its possible impact on the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Countries like Brazil strongly supported India’ intervention to express concerns on the lacklustre approach on the working group while United States still strongly supported IMPACT, according to the information reaching here.