Responses to the Global Health Crisis (2025)

Week 1: Problems (January 29)

• Readings:
  • Fisher & Syed, Rethinking Global Pharmaceutical Policy, chapters 1 & 2
  • United Nations High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines, Final Report, pages 13-20

Week 2: Tools (February 5)

• Guest Speaker: Talha Syed
• Reading: Syed, “Does Pharma Need Patents,” forthcoming, Yale Law Journal.

Week 3: Objectives (February 12)

• Readings:
  • United Nations: Sustainable Development Goal #3
  • Jennifer Prah Ruger, “Global Health Justice” (2009)

Week 4: Improving Pharmaceutical Markets (February 19)

• Readings:
  • Fisher & Syed, Rethinking Global Pharmaceutical Policy, chapter 5
• Resources (Optional):
  • Vincent Ahonkhai et al., “Speeding Access to Vaccines and Medicines in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Case for Change and a Framework for Optimized Product Market Authorization,” PLoS ONE 11, no. 11 (2016).
  • Fisher, Okediji & Gehl Sampath, “Fostering Production of Pharmaceutical Products in Developing Countries” (2021)

Week 5: Voluntary Licensing (February 26)

• Reading:
  • Charles Gore et al., “Negotiating public-health intellectual property licensing agreements to increase access to health technologies: an insider’s story,” 8 BMJ Global Health 2059 (2023)
  • Fisher & Syed, Rethinking Global Pharmaceutical Policy, chapter 7
• Negotiation Exercise

Week 6: Reforming Intellectual Property (March 5: 8:00 -10:00 a.m.)

• Guest Speaker: Jayashree Watal
• Readings:
  • Council for TRIPS, “Paragraph 8 of the Ministerial Decision on the TRIPS Agreement, Thematic Session,” October 23, 2023
  • Fisher & Syed, Rethinking Global Pharmaceutical Policy, chapter 8
• Resources (Optional):
  • IFPMA, “Boosting Innovation and Access”
  • Fisher & Rigamonti, “The South Africa AIDS Controversy: A Case Study in Patent Law and Policy” (2005)
  • United Nations High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines, Final Report, pages 21-32
  • Interview with Martin Friede, Coordinator, Initiative for Vaccine Research, World Health Organization (45 minutes) (vimeo version)

Week 7: Capacity Building (March 12)

• Guest Speaker: Edwin Mercado
• Reading:
  • Matthew Herder et al., “‘Our project, your problem?’ A case study of the WHO’s mRNA technology transfer programme in South Africa,” PLOS global public health (2024)
  • “AI & Barangay Health Workers” (2025)
  • Shuyue Stella Li, “MEDIQ: Question-Asking LLMs and a Benchmark for Reliable Interactive Clinical Reasoning” 38th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2024).

Week 8: Carrots (March 26)

• Readings:
  • Dean Baker, “Drugs are Cheap” (2017)
  • WIPO Report on Conditional Grants (2024)
  • Philip Stevens & Stephen Ezell, “Delinkage Debunked” (2020)

Week 9: Sticks (April 2)

• Readings:
  • Fisher & Syed, Rethinking Global Pharmaceutical Policy, chapter 10
    

Week 10: The Special Case of Antibiotics (April 9)

• Reading: OECD Health Policy Studies, Embracing a One Health Framework to Fight Antimicrobial Resistance (2023), parts 1 & 5.

Week 11: How to Handle Traditional Knowledge (April 16)

• Guest Speaker: Prof. Ruth Okediji
• Reading: Symposium on Traditional Knowledge, Harvard International Law Journal (2005)

Week 12: Wrap Up (April 23)

• Lectures:
  • Coronavirus: The Big Questions (Bill Gates) (interview with Financial Times, 2019) (22 minutes)
  • Preparation for the Next Pandemic (Ashish Jha) (20 minutes) (Vimeo version) (mp4 version)

Guidelines for Class Discussions