For the past three years, the Faculty of Law at the University of KwaZulu-Natal has been conducting an accredited two-week course, annually, on Access to Medicines and Intellectual Property. The course is intended to increase the capacity of members of civil society, legal workers and government officials to advocate for changes in domestic and international intellectual property law and related legislation/regulation, in order to maximise access to medicines, to devise campaigns in their localities to improve access to medicines, and to create a network to advance this work.

This initiative is funded by the Open Society Institute and United Nations Development Programme.

The participants are drawn from all over Africa; but this year, the course attracted participants mainly from Uganda, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia.

In 2010 the course was successfully completed with seven certificates of competence awarded to 7 participants out of 11 participants.

List of 2010 Participants

2010 Participants’ testimonies of the course

“Keep it up, and for the wise choice of participants who in one way or the other are in the relevant field on issues being taught, and the combination of lecturers was just excellent.”

“There was a progressive presentation of issues from simple to more complicated issues and the use of examples made the issues to be comprehended very easy.”

“The course exceeded my expectations, which were to acquire knowledge on IP and access to medicines.”

“The course was elaborate and well presented. I liked the good use of examples which made the course practical.”

“The campaign strategies that we had at the end are very useful because they allowed us to put together everything we had learned in the last two weeks, and allowed us more group work. I liked the reaction paper and I am grateful that we got feedback on it.”

“The general organization of the programme was very good, and the lecturers have generally been great people, and the training was good.”

“The course was very appropriate and it made the new enforcement agenda very understandable.”

“The course was appropriate for NGO activists, academics and health workers. Keep it up.”             Back