By Laura MacInnis GENEVA, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Rich and poor countries disagreed on the scope of needed change at the World Health Organisation's (WHO) first high-level review of drug patents, which ended a week-long session on Friday without progress. Observers said the more than 100 governments involved in the talks agreed that drug research needed to focus more on diseases afflicting mainly the poor, such as AIDS and tuberculosis, and that medicines needed to be more easily available. They were divided, however, on the degree of overhaul needed to current intellectual property rules -- which critics say keep international drug prices unduly high, and discourage innovation in tropical and parasitic diseases, among others. "There seems to be a global consensus that some things are radically wrong and that we need to address them. There is also a recognition that this needs to be a global approach," Ellen 't Hoen of the relief agency Medicins Sans Frontieres' access to essential medicines campaign said. "There are divisions on what the solutions should be," she said after the talks in Geneva. The WHO launched the inter-governmental session on ways to better align intellectual property rules and health needs after a report it commissioned slammed the existing drug development, marketing and pricing system for ignoring the poor. While not reaching any agreement in this week's session, the participant countries will meet again next year to draft a global strategy on intellectual property, to be submitted to the United Nations agency in May 2008. A diplomat involved in this week's talks said that Brazil, Thailand, India and Kenya were most vocal in opposing the drug patent system, and encouraging more generic drug production. Some sought an international treaty on research and development in essential medicines to further highlight existing problems. The United States, European Union, Switzerland, Australia and Canada argued for other remedies to drug access and innovation shortfalls, such as increased public-private partnerships to spur investment in now-neglected areas. Margaret Chan, who will take over as head of the WHO in January, said when she was elected to the post last month that balancing intellectual property and health needs was one of the major challenges facing the WHO.
