Fair Pricing Forum 2024: meeting report
Overview
The World Health Organization (WHO) organized the fourth Fair Pricing Forum virtually, held from 6 to 8 February 2024. This Forum was organized in response to one of the mandates in the 2019 resolution WHA72.8 Improving the transparency of markets for medicines, vaccines, and other health products, which requested the WHO Director-General “to continue WHO’s efforts to biennially convene the Fair Pricing Forum with WHO Member States and all relevant stakeholders to discuss the affordability and transparency of prices and costs relating to health products” (1). This Forum followed the inaugural meeting in the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 2017 (10–11 May), the second Forum in South Africa in 2019 (11–13 April), and the third – co-hosted virtually with support from the Government of Argentina – in 2021 (13–15 and 20–22 April).
Members of governments, nongovernmental organizations, international agencies, civil society, WHO collaborating centres, academic experts, and the pharmaceutical, medical devices and health care industries convened for the fourth Forum to achieve three key objectives:
- share experiences between participants about existing and planned efforts to enhance market transparency across the pharmaceutical value chain, with reference to resolution WHA72.8;
- assess current and emerging health system challenges to ensure optimal access to affordable health products; and 1 These include essential health products listed in the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines, the WHO Model List of Essential In Vitro Diagnostics (3), and WHO global lists of priority medical devices.
- discuss with all stakeholders the current and future potential policies and strategies for improving the affordability of essential medicines and health products, 1 considering the trends and initiatives with respect to the themes that emerged from the last Forum in 2021.
