IDC Inquiry: MSF submission

Addressing price and supply barriers for life-saving medical products globally

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the crucial role of biomedical innovations in our response efforts—yet only if they are made globally available. While vaccines were developed at unprecedented speed, the pandemic underscored the deep global inequities in access to life-saving medical products. To effectively respond to health emergencies and curb their spread, it is essential for governments to ensure that those most at risk, no matter where they live, can access medical countermeasures. However, these access challenges extend beyond outbreaks. The prevailing business model for developing and making available medical products often creates significant barriers—such as high prices and limited supply—that prevent people, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), from accessing them.

The Committee should examine this area because a key UK priority is leadership in the life-sciences sector, and the UK is a leading donor of multilateral institutions such as Gavi, CEPI and the Global Fund. To maximise the impact of biomedical research and development (R&D) funding, the UK should attach conditions to publicly-funded R&D efforts to ensure equitable access to the end products. These conditions should include requirements around pricing, technology transfer, open-licensing and transparency. With substantial public funding committed for biomedical R&D, and with many prominent pharmaceutical companies based in the UK, this would support the life sciences strategy to have bigger domestic and global impact. Pricing conditions to ensure affordability would support cost savings for the NHS, and help maximise the impact of UK donor funding when these products are procured by multilateral institutions. As such, this area would benefit from further parliamentary scrutiny to maximise the impact of public and ODA funding, and to ensure transparency and accountability.

Global inequities in access to medical products have been seen repeatedly – most recently in COVID-19 and Mpox, anti-microbial resistance (AMR), and in chronic conditions. For example, long-acting cabotegravir (CAB-LA) for HIV was developed by UK company, ViiV Healthcare, and if made globally available could be a real gamechanger in HIV treatment and prevention. However, it remains prohibitively expensive and in short supply for LMICs.

The market-driven business model also means diseases which have limited profitability like AMR have not been research priorities - the fallout of which is now an urgent public health crisis. Substantial amounts of public funding is now being committed to incentivise the development of new antibiotics.

It is important for the Committee to examine this area now since this is the year the WHO Pandemic Accord will be finalised and implemented. With public funding driving most of the R&D for COVID-19, attaching conditions to public R&D funding has been central to Accord negotiations as there is recognition this could be a transformative step in helping to ensure equitable access. The Foreign Secretary has also recognized that the current system exacerbates inequities, emphasising the importance of enabling countries in the Global South to produce their own vaccines. This moment therefore offers a key opportunity for Government policy on access conditionality on public R&D funding to be reviewed and implemented systematically.

The Government needs to act in this area because it could save more lives with the money it is spending. By attaching conditions to public funding of R&D to ensure equitable access to these innovations, it could demonstrate global leadership and save countless more lives.

Please note this a joint submission with the following civil society organisations: STOPAIDS, Just Treatment and the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC).