Event Report  |  01/10/2023

Access to Affordable Medicines in Wartime Ukraine - Roundtable Discussion

On 1 December 2022, the Institute held an online roundtable on the topic ‘Facilitating Access to Affordable Medicines During Wartime in Ukraine’. The event was co-organised in cooperation with the Scientific and Research Institute of Intellectual Property of the National Academy of Law Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine), the Institute of Law of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Kyiv, Ukraine) and the patient-led health initiative CO ‘100% Life’ (Kyiv, Ukraine). 

The overall objective was to discuss potential solutions under intellectual property (IP) law for alleviating the public health crisis in Ukraine through the exchange with international legal scholars. The latter included Matthias Leistner (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany), Geertrui Van Overwalle (KU Leuven, Belgium), Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan (University of Cambridge, UK), Mohammed El Said (University of Central Lancashire, UK), Peter K Yu (Texas A&M University, USA) und Erika Dueñas Loayza (Intellectual Property Unit of the World Health Organization’s Access to Medicines and Health Products Division).


The Ukrainian colleagues provided an overview of the current situation with the demand and supply of medicinal products in the aftermath of the outbreak of war. The participants discussed how the existing TRIPS flexibilities may apply in the context of today’s Ukraine to protect public health and which factors can enable or contribute to their impactful application. The co-organisers plan to continue the dialogue on this subject. 


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