Access to Pharmaceuticals

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

Despite the much-vaunted promise of globalization, relatively little medical research has been devoted to diseases that overwhelmingly affect people living in low-and middle income countries, leading to the so-called “neglected tropical diseases” for which appropriate treatment is lacking or inadequate. At the same time, developing countries are increasingly experiencing the disease profile of high-income countries, but new pharmaceutical inventions for these diseases are commercialized at prices that are beyond the reach of most people in developing countries and beyond their governments’ health care budgets. It is important to understand how this has come about and what the international community is doing to alleviate the resulting global health inequity. As it turns out, it is doing quite a lot. This course critically reviews the actors, institutions, and international arrangements that bear responsibility for the current state of affairs and the actions that are being taken to improve access to pharmaceutical products in developing countries.