There has been the usual kerfuffle this week about getting medicines on the NHS. Terry Pratchett has been banging his drum about Alzheimers and Big Pharma has been copping a bit of flak for their usual merciless approach to pricing.
We continue to indulge in the usual handwringing for drugs that, in some cases, can extend life for a few weeks and are so expensive it makes my hair throb. Meantime at least a third of the rest of the planet can't get the very basic essential effective medicines. If you think drugs are too expensive for us then pause for a second to consider the ramifications if you live on a dollar a day.
Medicins San Frontier have the Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines and it pretty much does what it says on the tin. They seem chuffed with UNITAID and said as much back in July. UNITAID (a new organisation in 2006 with some interesting funding) have done some work to address one of the bigger issues. The 20-year patent rule holds it all up and until that runs out it is tricky to make cheap drugs for all (ahem) but before then there is nowt but trouble. UNITAID have taken steps to establish a 'patent pool' which will go some way to reducing these problems.
MSF said:
“UNITAID has shown great vision and understanding of what needs to be done - this could potentially have a big impact, both for access to medicines and for medical innovation”, said Ellen ‘t Hoen, Director of Policy at MSF’s Access Campaign. “Whether this works or not now depends on the willingness of patent holders to share, in exchange for royalties, the relevant patent rights in the pool.”Jolly good stuff and well done to all of them but the patent holders are presumably Big Pharma. I won't hold my breath.
2 comments:
Oooh, oooh, so maybe was can petition the nice folks at MSF to launch their campaign here, facilitating access to MMR vaccination 'pon our shores? ;-)
We could certainly do with summat.
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