PAHO’s vaccine system hampers African efforts

Efforts to make newer and more costly vaccines widely available to the poorest in Africa are being hampered by a long-standing system that makes vaccines affordable to middle-income Latin American countries, reports the Financial Times.
The Pan American Health Organization’s (PAHO) revolving fund, which began in 1979, negotiates substantial discounts with manufacturers on prices in richer [...]

GAVI announces innovative approach to developing vaccines for developing nations

At the end of last week, the GAVI Alliance partners (the World Bank, WHO and UNICEF), five national governments and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation formally announced the first-ever Advance Market Commitment (AMC) designed to accelerate access to vaccines against pneumococcal disease.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the $1.5 billion program marks a departure [...]

New Partnership aims to deliver affordable, effective malaria drugs to the poor

A new international partnership, backed by the United Nations, hopes to put affordable malaria drugs within reach of millions of people, especially children, in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
The rationale behind The Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria, as the new initiative is known, will be to reduce the price of effective new therapies (artemisinin combination therapies [...]

The FDA and innovation

A well-run FDA is crucial to ensuring that Americans continue to get access to the best new therapies in a timely fashion.  Lengthy and costly approval periods–which average 10 years and $1 billion per product under consideration–raise important questions about whether the FDA is doing its part to make sure innovative new therapies can reach [...]

Not letting the facts get in the way of a weak argument

Ensuring that patients around the world have access to safe and affordable medicines – be they brand name or generic – is an issue worthy of thoughtful global discussion and action.  But that discussion should be honest and forthright and not driven by half-truths and misrepresentation of the facts.
Recently, officials in the Netherlands exercised diligence [...]

Innovation in Drug Access

A recent article in Global Health Magazine (Big pharma bets on emerging economies) focuses on the increasing use of tiered pricing by pharmaceutical companies to remain competitive in the global economy. 
“Such nuanced approaches to drug pricing that more closely reflect the ability to pay represent an attractive new trade-off for pharmaceutical companies: they provide greater [...]

Gates Foundation boosts fight against neglected tropical diseases

The Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases recently announced that it has received $34 million through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the Sabin Vaccine Institute to step up the global effort to prevent and treat neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). These debilitating and sometimes deadly diseases affect 1.4 billion people worldwide [...]

TACD meeting on Patents, Copyright and Knowledge Governance

The Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue recently hosted a meeting in Washington D.C. on Patents, Copyrights and Knowledge Governance.  Panellists were charged with making 2-3 concrete policy recommendations re IP for the incoming Obama administration.  While no consensus was reached, and in fact only a few of the presenters actually provided specific policy recommendations, there were some interesting presentations [...]

Backgrounder on compulsory licensing

The Council on Foreign Relations recently posted an interesting article which discusses global trade rules for intellectual property in the context of access to essential medicines.  The following is a brief overview of the article: 
In 1995, members of the WTO ascribed to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which established minimum levels [...]

Counterfeit Drugs: Definitions Matter, but Not as Much as Quality and Safety

 Dr. Kristina M. Lybecker
The safety and efficacy of medicines is something that most patients in developed countries take for granted.  Whether it’s a vaccination, prescription, or over the counter drug, most people assume that the medicines they’re getting are legitimate.  While bogus drugs are most frequently found in the most vulnerable markets – those of [...]