Some tidbits on a more just healthcare policy
Yesterday, on October 3, a group met at the Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance to discuss the fair access of medicine. The group consisted of about 40 audience members, the moderator Gesine Schwan, as well the so-called Trialogue, Klaus Leisinger, the president and CEO of the Novartis Institute for Sustainable Development, Anke Martiny, board member at Transparency International, Germany, and Susanne Weber-Mosdorf, the director of the EU office of the World Health Organization.
Leisinger began by presenting the desparate situation of the world's most impoverished 2 million people who have no access to medications. His most noteable points were:
- There is an enormous discrepancy between what western leaders think and discuss about the situation in developing countries and what the reality actually is enormous. Administrative tape seems to be a formidible monster: the cheap plastic inhalers that are required to save countless numbers of children from death never actually reach these children. This can also be attributed to the corrupt regimes and weaknesses in infrastructure of the developing countries, as well as to other factors.
- Under these "other factors," is the inaccessibility to people living in the countryside. Leisinger called these the places that are "five miles from a paved road," and claims that these areas are the hardest hit by a lack of medications. In India and China, he mentioned the problem that doctors who are trained in rural areas then often apply for jobs in the large cities.
- Particularly interesting: The Novartis Institute also employs SMS technologies in much the same way that the betterplace lab does. The project SMS for Life encourages the employees of health centres to provide regular updates by SMS about the current inventories of malaria medications. Why should they bother doing this? Because they receive 10 minutes of free telephone time in return! Incentives work!
I had hoped that Leisinger's statement "no one should die because of patents" would lead to a lively discussion with the representatives from Transparency and the WHO. Unfortunatley, Ms. Martiny and Ms. Weber-Mosdorf held relatively short presentations and, after an hour, there were too many disconnected topics still in the air and no especially lively discussion. They did address, however, the following problems:
- Ms. Martiny remarked that 13 of the 16 members of the Standing Committee on Vaccination have intimate ties to the pharmaceutical industry (also see this criticism in a Wikipedia article).
- Ms. Weber-Mosdorf stated that 20 to 30 percent of the medications in developing countries are faked (ineffective).
- Ms. Weber-Mosdorf pointed out that, although pharmaceutical companies complain about the high costs development and access for new medications, they rarely mention that publicly-funded universities are already doing the lion's share of the research themselves.
- Multi-resistant antiobiotics is going to be an enormous, grave problem in the near future, and no one is paying this issue enough attention. All of the panelists agreed that pharmaceutical companies aren't investing in new antiobiotics and the media is not writing about this issue.
- Transparency, transparency, transparency! Ms. Weber-Mosdorf stated the need for more transparency in the healthcare system and the pharmaceutical industry.
- And finally, all of the participants worry that the decision-making power is too undemocratically concentrated within the giant, multi-millions dollar Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Altogether, it was a bits-and-pieces, but still interesting evening. If you are interested in other Trialogues at the Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance, you can find out more HERE. The next event (Nov. 17) features the U.S. Ambassador in Germany, who will discuss Obama's finance reform.
translated by Becky Crook
