Using the COVID Crisis to Build a More Just Medicine System
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
Session Description
Millions in the Global South died from HIV/AIDS 20 years ago, in part because rules on intellectual property blocked them from accessing treatments. This stain in the history of our global medicine system is repeating itself again in this pandemic, revealing the quasi-colonial structures, inequities and racism that still exist. Veteran activists in India, South Africa, and the U.S who fought for medicine access during the HIV/AIDS epidemic and are now leading efforts for the equitable distribution of COVID vaccines will be joined by an expert with experience of working at the inter-governmental and government level to discuss how we can redesign a more equitable global medicine system.
Time & Location
Time:
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM, Wednesday, April 14, 2021
BST
Location:
Virtual
Speakers
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Moderator
Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director, I-MAK
The son of a factory worker from a small, working-class mining town in the North of England, Tahir Amin is an attorney with more than 25 years of experience in intellectual property law. He practiced as a solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales with two of the leading IP firms in the United Kingdom, and served as in-house global IP counsel for multinational corporations. From this vantage point, Amin could see clearly how systems are shaped by those with the most resources—and how those outcomes often come at the expense of those with the least. In 2004, Amin gave up his lucrative job in London and moved to Bangalore, India, where he was instrumental to the passage of a health-friendly patent law. That process led him to eventually co-found I-MAK, with the express purpose of re-shaping patent law to better serve the public.
Amin’s pioneering work challenging patents has established a new model for treatment access, one that restores balance to the system by upending the structural power dynamics that allow inequities to persist. He has served as legal advisor/consultant to many groups, including the European Patent Office, United Nations Environment Programme and World Health Organisation. He is a former Harvard Medical School Fellow in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine and was a 2009 TED Fellow. Amin is a frequent speaker on patent policy and rising drug prices, and has been featured in CNBC, Newsweek, The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, and Reuters.
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Speaker
Global IP Advisor, Médecins Sans Frontières
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Speaker
Founder and Head, Health Justice Initiative
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Speaker
Former State Minister of Health, Pakistan
