The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is a South African HIV/AIDS activist organisation which was co-founded by the HIV-positive activist Zackie Achmat in 1998. TAC is rooted in the experiences, direct action tactics and anti-apartheid background of its founder. TAC has been credited with forcing the reluctant government of former South African President Thabo Mbeki to begin making antiretroviral drugs available to South Africans.
The Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines is an international campaign started by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to increase the availability of essential medicines in developing countries. MSF often has difficulties treating patients because the medicines required are too expensive or are no longer produced. Sometimes, the only drugs available are highly toxic or ineffective, and they often have to resort to inadequate testing methods to diagnose patients.
Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) is a student-led organization working to improve access to and affordability of medicines around the world, and to increase research and development of drugs for neglected tropical diseases. Supported by an active board of directors and guided by an advisory board that includes Partners in Health co-founder Paul Farmer and Nobel Laureate Sir John Sulston, UAEM has mobilized hundreds of students on more than 100 campuses in more than 20 countries. These student advocates have convinced universities worldwide to adopt equitable global access licensing policies for licensing their medical research, in order to make life-saving health innovations affordable and accessible in low and middle income countries. UAEM has published two student-led research projects—the University Report Card, which ranks universities on their contributions to global health and has received coverage in The New York Times and others; and Re:Route, a mapping of biomedical research and development (R&D) alternatives.
James Packard Love is the director of Knowledge Ecology International, formerly known as the Consumer Project on Technology, a non-governmental organization with offices in Washington, D.C. and Geneva, that works mainly on matters concerning knowledge management and governance, including intellectual property policy and practice and innovation policy, particularly as they relate to health care and access to knowledge.
Unitaid is a global health initiative that works with partners to bring about innovations to prevent, diagnose and treat major diseases in low- and middle-income countries, with an emphasis on tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS and its deadly co-infections. Founded in 2006, the organization funds the final stages of research and development of new drugs, diagnostics and disease-prevention tools, helps produce data supporting guidelines for their use, and works to allow more affordable generic medicines to enter the marketplace in low- and middle-income countries. Hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Unitaid was established by the governments of Brazil, Chile, France, Norway and the United Kingdom.
Evergreening is any of various legal, business, and technological strategies by which producers extend the lifetime of their patents that are about to expire in order to retain revenues from them. Often the practice includes taking out new patents, or by buying out or frustrating competitors, for longer periods of time than would normally be permissible under the law. Robin Feldman, a law professor at UC Law SF and a leading researcher in intellectual property and patents, defines evergreening as "artificially extending the life of a patent or other exclusivity by obtaining additional protections to extend the monopoly period."
Pharma fraud is a term to describe several illegal activities involving the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of pharmaceuticals.
Legal scholars, economists, activists, policymakers, industries, and trade organizations have held differing views on patents and engaged in contentious debates on the subject. Critical perspectives emerged in the nineteenth century that were especially based on the principles of free trade. Contemporary criticisms have echoed those arguments, claiming that patents block innovation and waste resources that could otherwise be used productively, and also block access to an increasingly important "commons" of enabling technologies, apply a "one size fits all" model to industries with differing needs, that is especially unproductive for industries other than chemicals and pharmaceuticals and especially unproductive for the software industry. Enforcement by patent trolls of poor quality patents has led to criticism of the patent office as well as the system itself. Patents on pharmaceuticals have also been a particular focus of criticism, as the high prices they enable puts life-saving drugs out of reach of many people. Alternatives to patents have been proposed, such Joseph Stiglitz's suggestion of providing "prize money" as a substitute for the lost profits associated with abstaining from the monopoly given by a patent.
The cost of HIV treatment is a complicated issue with an extremely wide range of costs due to varying factors such as the type of antiretroviral therapy and the country in which the treatment is administered. The first line therapy of HIV, or the initial antiretroviral drug regimen for an HIV-infected patient, is generally cheaper than subsequent second-line or third-line therapies. There is also a great variability of drug prices among low, middle, and high income countries. In general, low-income countries have the lowest cost of antiretroviral therapy, while middle- and high-income tend to have considerably higher costs. Certain prices of HIV drugs may be high and difficult to afford due to patent barriers on antiretroviral drugs and slow regulatory approval for drugs, which may lead to indirect consequences such as greater HIV drug resistance and an increased number of opportunistic infections. Government and activist movements have taken efforts to limit the price of HIV drugs.
South Africa's Medicines and Related Substance 1997 is a law enacted a compulsory license in order to fight HIV/AIDS epidemic. The intent of the Act was to reduce drug prices by allowing generic substitution of off-patent drugs, the parallel importation of on-patent drugs as well as price transparency.
The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) is a Unitaid-backed international organisation founded in July 2010, based in Geneva, Switzerland. Its public health driven business model aims to lower the prices of HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis C medicines and facilitate the development of better-adapted HIV treatments through voluntary licensing and patent pooling. Its goal is to improve access to affordable and appropriate HIV, hepatitis C and tuberculosis medicines in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). In May 2020, the MPP become an implementing partner of the WHO's Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP).
Joanne Liu, M.D., O.Q., M.S.C, is a Canadian pediatric emergency medicine physician, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Montreal, Professor of Clinical Medicine at McGill University, and the previous International President of Médecins sans Frontières. She was elected president during MSF's International General Assembly in June 2013.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is a foundation that takes donations from public, private, philanthropic, and civil society organisations, to finance research projects which are not longer independent to develop vaccines against emerging infectious diseases (EID).
Access to medicines refers to the reasonable ability for people to get needed medicines required to achieve health. Such access is deemed to be part of the right to health as supported by international law since 1946.
Vaccine development and production is economically complex and prone to market failure. Many of the diseases most demanding a vaccine, including HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, exist principally in poor countries. Pharmaceutical firms and biotechnology companies have little incentive to develop vaccines for these diseases because there is little revenue potential. Even in more affluent countries, financial returns are usually minimal and the financial and other risks are great.
Waiver from certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreement for the Prevention, Containment and Treatment of COVID-19 is a joint intervention communication by South Africa and India to the TRIPS council of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on 2 October 2020.
Priti Krishtel is a lawyer and advocate for patent reform and increased public participation in the patent system. She co-founded the United States-based nonprofit organization the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge.
Rachel Kiddell-Monroe LL.M is a Montreal-based academic, activist, and lawyer. She is the General Director of See Change Initiative and faculty at McGill University where she teaches about humanitarian aid.
The Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge, known as I-MAK, is a U.S.-based global 501(c)(3) organization that advocates in the public interest for affordable access to medicines, and a medicines system that is more inclusive of patients and the public.
Unni Karunakara M.D. is an Indian-born public health physician, an academic, and was the international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) from 2010 to 2013.
