WHO Stats Show Medicines Remain Out Of Reach Of Poorest Patients 15/05/2013 by Intellectual Property Watch 1 Comment Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)By Rachel Marusak-Hermann for Intellectual Property Watch While the World Health Organization’s latest health numbers show that great progress has been made in improving the health in low-income countries, significant inequalities remain between people living in the richest and poorest countries. Access to even the most basic medicines continues to be a major challenge due to high prices. The WHO released this year’s World Health Statistics today, highlighting progress that has been made in achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and reducing the health gap between people living in the world’s most-advantaged and least-advantaged countries. The latest stats show that compared to the MDG 1990 baseline year, the health situation in low-income countries is improving and health inequalities are lessening. In particular, a WHO news release points to the “considerable progress” which has been made in reducing childhood deaths, improving nutrition, and reducing death from HIV infection, TB, and malaria. Nonetheless, many of the health-related MDGs are projected to remain out of reach by the impending 2015 target. When it comes to improving access to essential medicines, the 2013 World Health Statistics indicate a long road ahead. According to the statistics summary, “almost half of the countries surveyed have access to less than half the essential medicines they need for basic care in the public sector.” Consequently, many people living in low- and middle-income countries turn to the private sector where the cost of even basic, generic medicines, can be up to 16 times higher. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window) Related "WHO Stats Show Medicines Remain Out Of Reach Of Poorest Patients" by Intellectual Property Watch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Riaz Tayob says 15/05/2013 at 5:51 pm So long term planning of the UN Development Decades was replaced by the MDGs at US insistence (UN was budget hostage to Bolton and Bush) and we moved from qualitative assessments to much more qualitative ones. Chan is then wrong, what is measured does not get done. The real contradiction on access to medicines, aside from larger social welfare issues, is that WHO does take a stance on Free Trade with monopolistic IPRs (according to real free traders – Bhagwati – this is a contradiction; and Gregory Mankiw fudge serviceable for WHO – is it is external. Neoclassical economics assumes perfect information, when in health one has perfect assymetry. But don’t worry logic says things will work out to equilibrium and assumptions don’t matter, we measure the results. A 16x order of magnitude difference is apparently a unique equilibrium, after all the theories cannot be wrong, the fault is with reality. And WHO has fought necessary flexibility on IPRs for a long time, and is generally pro-bigPharma. Chan and Lamy will come out and support eating pork during a Swine Flu “pandemic” even though the virus risk was mutation. But nothing about African’s rights to use LEGAL rights under international agreements. But rather let us all place all faith in the market system and debunked economics and with WHO reports the emperor will always look well dressed… Reply