Great article from Laura MacInnis and Stephanie Nebehay regarding pharma incentives to create vaccines that fight against emergent threats, including the latest influenza pandemic.

By Laura MacInnis and Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - Pharmaceutical firms need incentives, including lucrative patents, to keep creating drugs and vaccines against emergent threats such as the H1N1 influenza pandemic, the World Health Organization’s head said on Tuesday.

“Progress in public health depends on innovation. Some of the greatest strides forward for health have followed the development and introduction of new medicines and vaccines,” said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said.

Chan, who last month declared a full pandemic underway from the H1N1 virus, said that patents can help ensure that companies develop medicines to “stay ahead of the development of drug resistance” in diseases like malaria and tuberculosis.

The discovery of isolated H1N1 infections that resist the anti-viral Tamiflu, made by Roche and Gilead, and the global scramble to secure flu vaccines have shown the importance of robust research and development, Chan said.

“Innovation is needed to keep pace with the emergence of new diseases, including pandemic influenza caused by the new H1N1 virus,” she told a meeting on intellectual property and health, a contentious issue that has divided rich and poor nations.

In the speech, Chan said most drug access problems faced by developing countries could be remedied by tinkering with the existing patent system, which “operates as a stimulus for research and development for new products.”

In May, at the WHO’s annual assembly, rich and poor nations failed to reach consensus on how they should share virus samples of H1N1 and other flu strains with companies that use the biological material to make vaccines.

Indonesia has been especially vocal against this, arguing that developing countries would not be able to afford patented jabs made from their specimens.

Read the rest of the article here.