E-DRUG: Street Price: new VSO report on access to meds
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87% of the UK public think drugs should be cheaper in developing
countries!
VSO's Treatment for Life campaign published a new report, Street
Price,
which proposes a framework for making drugs cheaper and far more
available
in developing countries to end the present unfair situation where, in
relative terms, the average Kenyan has to spend the equivalent of
GBP17,000
to buy a month's course of drugs for HIV/AIDS related meningitis. "We
regularly saw people die because they couldn't afford medicines",
Gavin
Kay, VSO pharmacist, Ghana
If adopted, the framework would ensure that all developing countries
would
be offered the same low price for each drug. The measures include a
database of prices (including prices from generic drug producers), a
forum
for negotiation by developing countries and simple mechanisms to stop
cheap medicines flowing back to wealthier countries, such as different
packaging/ tablet colour (which are already being used for drug
donations). The framework is based on criteria suggested by developing
country stakeholders, during research carried out in Kenya, Uganda and
India.
The government is looking closely at the issue of equity pricing, and
the
report is timed to coincide with the first meeting of a new government
working group on access to medicines. Chaired by Clare Short, the
working
group brings together high level UK ministers, CEOs of drug companies,
the
WHO and WTO to discuss how to lower drug prices in poor countries.
VSO commissioned a survey to launch the report, which discovered that
87%
of the UK public think developing countries should pay less for
medicines
than we do here, and that 79% think the UK Government should be doing
more
to make medicines in poor countries more available.
Street Price is available in print version and on VSO's website
<www.vso.org.uk>. For further information about the report and VSO's
current
advocacy work in this area, please contact:
Ken Bluestone ken.bluestone@vso.org.uk
Anna Thomas anna.thomas@vso.org.uk
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