Global Health Crisis
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By: Crispin Hughes/Oxfam |
Each year, 14 million people in developing countries die from infectious diseases. This works out to about 37,000 deaths a day from diseases like pneumonia, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, measles, and diarrhea. Most of these people are too poor to afford medicines that could save or prolong their lives, even though such medicines exist and are widely available in rich countries.
When patented medicines are priced out of the reach of poor patients–and out of the reach of their governments, many of which can't afford to spend more than a few dollars per person per year on healthcare–people suffer or die needlessly.
It's a matter of values: does the right of a corporation to earn a profit on its new product count more than the lives of millions of people? Shouldn't the balance between innovators' interests and the community's interest be protected somehow from such inaccessible pricing?
Additional Facts on the Global Health Crisis:
In many poor countries, few people have health insurance and spending on drugs comprises 50 to 90 percent of household costs for health care. In Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in West Africa, drugs account for over 80 percent of the spending on health.
Annual government spending on health care in many low-income countries is usually $5 to $7 per person. In many wealthy countries, it is $1,600.
Consumers in rich countries spend more than $2.2 billion per year on the drug Claritin, used to treat the symptoms of hay fever. That is more than the total annual expenditure on drugs in all of sub-Saharan Africa.
(source: Rigged Rules and Double Standards: trade, globalization, and the fight against poverty, Chapter 8.)
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