Antecedentes

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is the UN’s global development network, advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. We are on the ground in 170 countries and territories, working with governments and people on their own solutions to global and national development challenges to help empower lives and build resilient nations.

The Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) has the responsibility for developing all relevant policy and guidance to support the results of UNDP’s Strategic Plan.  BPPS’s staff provides technical advice to Country Offices; advocates for UNDP corporate messages, represents UNDP at multi-stakeholder fora including public-private dialogues, government and civil society dialogues, South-South and Triangular cooperation initiatives, and engages in UN inter-agency coordination in specific thematic areas.  BPPS works closely with UNDP’s Crisis Response Unit (CRU) to support emergency and crisis response.  BPPS ensures that issues of risk are fully integrated into UNDP’s development programmes. BPPS assists UNDP and partners to achieve higher quality development results through an integrated approach that links results based management and performance monitoring with more effective and new ways of working.  BPPS supports UNDP and partners to be more innovative, knowledge and data driven including in its programme support efforts.

BPPS supports UNDP’s 2014-2017 Strategic Plan, focusing on 7 outcomes including strengthening institutions to progressively deliver universal access to basic services (outcome 3). The HIV Health and Sustainable development team, within BPPS, is helping to contribute towards this outcome.

HIV, Health and Development Approach

UNDP is a founding cosponsor of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), a partner of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and a co-sponsor of several other international health partnerships. UNDP’s work on HIV, health and development leverages the organization’s core strengths and mandates in human development, governance and capacity development to complement the efforts of specialist health-focused UN agencies. UNDP delivers three types of support to countries in HIV, health and development.

First, UNDP helps countries to mainstream attention to HIV and health into action on gender, poverty and the broader effort to achieve and sustain the Millennium Development Goals.  For example, UNDP works with countries to understand the social and economic factors that play a crucial role in driving health and disease, and to respond to such dynamics with appropriate policies and programmes outside the health sector. UNDP also promotes specific action on the needs and rights of women and girls as they relate to HIV.

Second, UNDP works with partners to address the interactions between governance, human rights and health responses. Sometimes this is done through focused or specialized programmes, such as promoting attention to the role of legal environments (law and access to justice) in facilitating stronger HIV responses, including the use of flexibilities in intellectual property and human rights law to lower the cost of drugs and diagnostics and to increase access to HIV-related treatment.  UNDP also works to empower and include people living with HIV and marginalized populations who are disproportionately affected by HIV - also known as key populations - such as sex workers, men who have sex with men, transgender people.  Beyond these focused efforts, UNDP plays a key role in ensuring attention to HIV and health within broader governance and rights initiatives, including support to district and municipal action on MDGs, strengthening of national human rights institutions and increasing access to justice for marginalized populations.

Third, as a trusted, long-term partner with extensive operational experience, UNDP supports countries in effective implementation of complex, multilateral and multisectoral health projects, while simultaneously investing in capacity development so that national and local partners can assume these responsibilities over time. The UNDP/Global Fund partnership is an important part of this work, facilitating access to resources for action on MDG 6 by countries that face constraints in directly receiving and managing such funding. UNDP partners with countries in crisis/post-crisis situations, those with weak institutional capacity or governance challenges, and countries under sanctions. When requested, UNDP acts as interim Principal Recipient in these settings, working with national partners and the Global Fund to improve management, implementation and oversight of Global Fund grants, while simultaneously developing national capacity for governments or local entities to be able to assume the Principal Recipient role over time.

Finally, UNDP helps countries to mainstream attention to HIV and health into action on gender, poverty and the broader effort to achieve and sustain the Millennium Development Goals. For example, UNDP promotes specific action on the needs and rights of women and girls as they relate to HIV.UNDP also works with countries to understand the social and economic factors that play a crucial role in driving health and disease, and to respond to such dynamics with appropriate policies and programmes outside the health sector. In addition, within the MDGs, “MDG 8.E” specifically addresses the sector gap in R&D funding for new global health technologies for global disease and their availability:  “In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries”.  In response to MDG 8.E, UNDP is working with the Global Health Innovative Technology Fund (GHIT) on the project: GHIT: Research and Development (R&D) of New Global Health Technologies for TB, Malaria, NTDs and other Diseases for Patients and Citizens of Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs). Under this project, GHIT will fund partnerships between the Japanese research organizations and international entities for the development of new global health technologies for TB, Malaria, NTDs and other diseases for patients and citizens of LMICs.

A related project is the Building Capacity for Access and Delivery of New Global Health Technologies for Tuberculosis (TB), Malaria, Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), and other Diseases in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs). Under this project, UNDP, with partners, will build LMIC capacity in legal and policy frameworks (including on intellectual property); develop understanding of country needs including potential market size and user perspectives; grow health sector capacity in monitoring of Phase IV clinical trials; strengthen health financing; and support decision-making on pricing, supply, and delivery for new global health technologies. The consultant will perform a key advisory role in respect of innovation, licensing and access and delivery of new health technologies for both these projects.

Objective

This assignment relates to the development of a UNDP capacity building resource document on patent examination that will assist developing country patent offices to effectively incorporate a public health perspective in the examination of patents related to pharmaceuticals.

Although a small number of new chemical entities are approved annually, the number of pharmaceutical patents applied for is disproportionately large. There is a need to monitor and analyse trends in pharmaceutical patenting, to respond to growing concerns about the increase in the number of patents that protect variants of existing drugs or processes, while the number of patents on new molecular entities is small and declining. There is increasing evidence that low standards of patentability and shortcomings in patent examination can, in fact, lead to the grant of “poor-quality” patents. In the circumstances, the criteria applied to examine and grant pharmaceutical patents are a matter of concern for public health policies.

The experience of expanding ARV access in the developing countries demonstrated that access to affordable ARVs requires the interplay of different factors, but key among these is the absence of patent restrictions that permitted the generic production of affordable ARVs that has triggered the market competition that significantly reduced ARV prices. The implementation of public health-sensitive patentability criteria, which is designed to protect real inventions but prevents the granting of (extended) monopoly rights for merely incremental innovation or obvious modifications to existing inventions, can have critical impact on the accessibility and affordability of medicines.

The assignment is a contribution to on-going technical assistance provided by UNDP to patent authorities in LMICs. UNDP has assisted countries through training workshops aimed at training patent examiners and intellectual property experts on the examination of pharmaceutical patents from a public health perspective, as well as in raising their awareness of developments in other developing countries where patent examination guidelines have been developed to introduce a public health perspective. Previous workshops have highlighted the need for the development of appropriate national guidelines for the examination of patent claims relating to pharmaceuticals. This expert legal analysis to be taken under the assignment will thus be a contribution to policy deliberations and  the on-going process of patent law reform in LMICs.

Deberes y responsabilidades

Under the overall supervision of the Programme Advisor of the Access and Delivery Partnership, the Consultant will be responsible for:

• Researching and identifying a list of the common modalities and categories of pharmaceutical patent claims;
• Reviewing the practice of patent offices in the examination and grant of patents and the relevant approaches that have been adopted in other patent offices; and
• Proposing a set of public health sensitive guidelines for the evaluation and review of pharmaceutical claims at the national level in developing countries, including relevant illustrations of state practice in other countries.

Expected Output:  There are four deliverables to the consultancy:

• Brief inception report which includes a methodology for researching the different approaches by patent offices in developing countries to pharmaceutical patent claims;
• Interim report documenting findings around modalities and categories of pharmaceutical patent claims, for peer review;
• Draft study, comprising the three components a., b. and c. as outlined in responsibilities above, for submission to UNDP;
• Final study, comprising the three components a., b. and c. as outlined in responsibilities above, for submission to UNDP.

Reporting:

The consultant will regularly evaluate progress in meeting the specific deliverable with the Programme Advisor of the Access and Delivery Partnership.

Travel:

No travel will be required for this assignment. In the case of unforeseeable travel, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between the respective business unit and Individual Consultant prior to travel.

Timeframe:

The consultant assignment is home based and is expected to last 56 days, completed part time over the period starting from 6 October to 31 December 2014.

Evaluation:

Applicants will be screened against qualifications and competencies specified below through a desk review or an interview process. Those selected for the next stage of the selection process will be reviewed based on: Cumulative analysis based on a combination of the Technical (70%) and Financial Scores (30%).

Technical Evaluation Criteria (maximum 70 points):

• An advanced degree in international trade law, intellectual property law, regulation, international affairs, or public health law, and a knowledge of at least one of the other substantive areas (20 points);
• A minimum of 10 years relevant work experience in the area of HIV, intellectual property, international trade, pharmaceutical policy, and international law or a related field (20 points);
• Excellent writing, research and analytical skills (15 points);
• A clearly demonstrated knowledge of access to treatment and intellectual property as evidenced by a strong publications record (15 points).

Financial Evaluation Criteria (maximum 30 points):

The following formula will be used to evaluate financial proposal:

p = y (µ/z), where:

p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated
y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal
µ = price of the lowest priced proposal
z = price of the proposal being evaluated

Payment: time based payment

Payment will be certified through the Certificate of Payment (COP) verified and signed by the direct supervisor. The rate will be based on the all-inclusive daily rate.

Competencias

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Functional Competencies:

• A clearly demonstrated knowledge of access to treatment and intellectual property as evidenced by a strong publications record;
• Excellent writing and editorial skills are essential;
• Relevant experience developing the capacity of civil society or government officials on intellectual property and access to treatment would be highly advantageous.

Communications and Advocacy:

• A proven track record on legal research;
• Excellent writing, research, analysis and presentation skills.

Habilidades y experiencia requeridas

Education:

• An advanced degree in international trade law, intellectual property law, regulation, international affairs, or public health law, and a knowledge of at least one of the other substantive areas.

Experience:

• A minimum of 10 years relevant work experience in the area of HIV, intellectual property, international trade, pharmaceutical policy, and international law or a related field;

Language Requirement:

• Excellent written and spoken English.