On November 12th, 18 producers of generic medicines joined an effort by the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) in order to expedite access to COVID-19 intellectual property. The MPP is a UN-backed public health organization that accelerates access to essential medicines in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In addition, a generic drug is a drug that works the same way and provides the same clinical benefits as a brand-name drug, but for a lower cost.
In this rare move, a group of pharmaceutical manufacturing companies recently signed onto the MPP’s COVID-19 Open Pledge, promising to “work together via the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) to accelerate access to hundreds of millions of doses of new interventions for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).” Under this pledge, the manufacturing companies are offering their production capacities to helping create billions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines or therapies for LMICs, given that the producers of the therapies allow them to be licensed to these generic manufacturers.
Read more on STAT News here.