UAEM-Amsterdam support letter

We already have 204 PHYSICAL SIGNATURES from researchers, medical doctors, students and many other people working and studying at the UvA, VU or related hospitals.

Please help us during this final sprint by signing this online petition to INCREASE GLOBAL ACCESS TO MEDICINES before we present the combined signatures to the board of Amsterdam UMC in the spring of 2020. 

 

To whom it may concern:

I hereby express my full support to Universities Allied for Essential Medicines – Amsterdam (UAEM- Amsterdam) and the policy goals they represent.

UAEM-Amsterdam is part of an international movement with the vision that universities and publicly funded research institutions should contribute to global access to medicines by:

  • promoting medical innovations that are in the public interest;
  • ensuring that all people regardless of income have:
    • access to medicines;
    • access to other health-related technologies.

I believe that every technology developed at the University of Amsterdam and VU Amsterdam with potential for further development into a drug, vaccine, or medical diagnostic should be licensed with a concrete and transparent strategy to make affordable versions available in resource-limited countries for medical care. The University of Amsterdam and VU Amsterdam should therefore implement Global Access Policies that adhere to the following five principles:

1. Access to medicines and health-related technologies for all is the primary purpose of technology transfer (e.g. licensing) of health-related innovations at the University of Amsterdam and VU Amsterdam. This includes protecting access to the final end product needed by patients (e.g. formulated pills or vaccines).

2. Technology transfer should preserve future innovation by ensuring that intellectual property does not act as a barrier to further research.

3. Generic competition is the most efficient method of facilitating affordable access to medicines in resource-limited countries. Legal barriers to generic production of these products for use in resource-limited countries should therefore be removed by including appropriate terms in the licensing agreement to ensure that follow-on patents and data exclusivity cannot be used to block generic production.

4. Technology transfer at the University of Amsterdam and VU Amsterdam should facilitate future innovation by patenting only when truly necessary to promote commercialization, utilizing non- exclusive licensing, creating streamlined processes for materials transfer, and reserving broad rights to use licensed technology in future research.

5. The global access licensing policy should be systematic in its approach, sufficiently transparent to verify its effectiveness, and based on explicit metrics that measure the success of technology transfer by its impact on access and continued innovation.

 

By signing this petition I confirm my support of the vision and the mission of UAEM-Amsterdam and I ask the University of Amsterdam and VU Amsterdam and its Technology Transfer Offices to adopt a global access licensing policy that adheres to the principles stated above.

 

 

Want to learn more about UAEM?
UAEM is part of an international network. Check out or websites: www.uaem.org (international) or www.uaem.nl/ (dutch). 

More about GAL?
For more detailed background and citations explaining the Global Access Licensing Framework, see the full PDF version.