Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1142

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Evans R.
Campaigners urge world pact to make drugs for poor
Reuters 2003 May 22

Full text:

GENEVA, May 22 – Of some 1,400 new medicines marketed in the last quarter century, a mere 16 were for malaria and other “poor man’s” diseases, charities said on Thursday. Tuberculosis and diseases rife in the tropics, such as malaria and sleeping sickness, kill 17 million people a year — 97 percent of them in developing countries, the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said.

It issued a report to help poorer governments and individuals challenge pharmaceutical patents held by multinational drug companies.

Key groups campaigning for cheaper drugs for poorer countries also called for a global pact to boost research into treatment for diseases devastating less developed economies.

The moves were aimed at delegates to the annual assembly of the 192-nation World Health Organisation (WHO), which next week discusses the highly charged issue of drug research, patents and public health.

“What we want to see is an international convention on essential health research and development that is health-driven and not profit-driven,” MSF, or Doctors Without Borders, policy director Ellen ‘t Hoen told a news conference.

She cited the new-medicine figures which were produced by MSF — which is also leading a drive to get cheaper AIDS medicines to the poor — and fellow activist groups Oxfam and Health Action International.

“Research and development in these areas has practically ground to a standstill…The market fails to deliver products that meet health needs,” ‘t Hoen said.

Campaigners say even AIDS research is aimed primarily at combating the disease in richer states, where sufferers or their governments can afford to pay much more for treatment.

Under a WHO convention, the three groups say, governments would agree on priorities for research, commit to fund it through public-sector involvement, and set up mechanisms for exchanging research results and manufacturing technology.

Big pharmaceutical firms say they need to make profits to fund research, and the patent system ensures they can do this.

‘t Hoen said the MSF report, “Drug Patents Under the Spotlight”, would help health ministries and aid groups avoid “being bullied into buying more expensive drugs when it is not necessary”.