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Date :  2005-09-16
langue :  Anglais
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Access to drugs

Drugs

Source :  Raffaele Salinari


As a preliminary definition, “access to drugs” can be considered as the direct and permanent possibility for any person in need to have access to necessary health-improving drugs without any obstacles. Any person in need must have the possibility to benefit from the drug he or she needs to save their life, to improve their health, or to prevent avoidable diseases without being discriminated.
This definition emerges from the principle that health is a fundamental human right, as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights approved by the majority of UN member states more than 50 years ago. Access to drugs must therefore be considered as a substantial part of this basic right. As soon as the 1970s, the World Health Organisation (WHO) made a list of the basic drugs that all people around the world should be able to have access to in case of need. Nowadays too many people - that is the majority of the human population in the world - have limited access to this right.
At a global level, there is a tremendous gap in the access: still too many people living in the so-called developing countries have limited access to drugs - even to essential or basic drugs, the ones that save lives or prevent transmittable diseases, such as antiviral drugs against HIV, tuberculosis, other common but mortal infectious diseases and the vaccines against smallpox or polio. Many people in the North believe that modern medicine is significantly continuing to improve global health. However, as stated by MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) in their campaign for access to basic drugs, “Polio has been nearly eradicated, smallpox eliminated, and it will only be a matter of time before cures for all other diseases are found. However, this confidence is misplaced and based more on history than reality”.
Today, one third of the world’s population lacks access to essential medicines, and in the poorest areas of Africa and Asia this figure rises to one half. The reason why the majority of people in developing countries - as well as poor people in rich countries - have little or no access to life-saving medicines is directly linked to the hyper-liberal phenomenon of globalisation, that consideres health as a mere commodity, that is as something which must only respond to the logic of profit instead of primarily aiming at securing health for all people.
There are many reasons why this is happening. The fact that the majority of life-saving drugs are patented, and that they are therefore the private property of pharmaceutical companies, is one of the main causes of the high prices of drugs. Another reason is that in the North, progressive cuts and privatisation of health systems are increasing the exclusion of the poor, even from the access to life-saving drugs. At the same time, the “rationalisation” of health systems imposed, for example, by the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to developing countries is destroying public health policies and, as a consequence, the access to medical care for the majority of people in those countries. The low quality of diagnosis, malpractice in the prescription of drugs, and weaknesses in the system of distribution, are also causes that limit the access to life–saving drugs in the poor countries.
Over the last 20 years, the HIV-AIDS pandemic has substantially contributed to increasing the gap between the ones that can afford the price of life-saving drugs and those excluded from their right to health. The WHO drew the attention of the international community to the fact that if this gap is maintained, within 20 years a substantial part of the population of Africa would probably die or be HIV-positive, which will have tremendous negative impacts on the economic and social life of the continent. In this perspective, access to drugs is a serious political problem that can only be solved through a global political willpower.
There are various solutions which rely on a combination of different policies in order to lower drug prices and to secure their access. To lower the prices of basic drugs, a combination of new international rules is needed regarding patents, international trade (trade policies must give the highest level of protection to public health), public policies supporting public health systems, and a law implementation that prioritises access to medicines in developing countries. The possibility for poor nations to have access to the so-called “generic” drugs, which contain the same active elements as ordinary drugs but are not restricted by patents, is also part of this global solution.
A second issue is increasing research into the so-called “neglected diseases” – such as tuberculosis, malaria, sleeping sickness, or diarrhoea-related infections. Nowadays, the pharmaceutical industry is not interested enough in developing efficient and cheap medicines for those diseases, because their consumers would be poor, and would not be able to pay high prices. Supporting developing countries so that they can develop their own public policies on research is also part of the solution.




For further information:


- www.accessmed-msf.org

- "Globalization and Access to Drugs"



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