E-DRUG: Oxfam statement on cancer medicines at WHO Executive board
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oxfam statement on Agenda 5.7 Cancer Medicines
Oxfam commends the WHO secretariat on producing the comprehensive and
evidence-based report.
Few years ago, poor people paid by their lives for the cost of global
inaction on the high prices of HIV medicines. Thanks to global campaigns
and therefore actions, now millions of people are alive due to low price
of medicines. These are not just numbers. They are women, men and children
who otherwise would have been dead.
The world must not wait any longer for patients with cancer to be able to
have the medicines that can save their lives. The current high prices act
to deepen global inequality where only the very rich can afford treatment
while the rest of us may have to go without.
Therefore, Oxfam urges the WHO to take proactive steps to:
1. Produce guidelines for the treatment of the different cancers.
Such guidelines are essential for governments (and oncologists) to design
and implement national plans to tackle cancer.
2. Support countries to implement national measures to decrease the
price of cancer medicines.
3. Advocate for global actions to address the price crisis, for
example by promoting R&D mechanisms that delink financing R&D from the
price of resulting products and transparency on the cost of R&D and
prices.
Oxfam also urge member states to work with WHO to turn the proposed
options into actions at both national and global levels.
I do not know if I am allowed to ask you to raise your hand if you know
someone in your contacts: your family, friends, neighbours, colleagues or
your milkman who have or have had cancer. But I imagine many hands would
be raised.
Cancer does not differentiate between rich and poor but medicines do. This
is not acceptable. Access to cancer treatment should be based on need not
on ability to pay high prices.
Best wishes from Geneva
Dr. Mohga Kamal-Yanni
Senior health & HIV policy advisor, Oxfam GB
Editor of www.globalhealthcheck.org
John Smith Drive, Oxford, UK
Mohga Kamal-Yanni <mkamalyanni@Oxfam.org.uk>