Access to medicines

MSF campaigns to challenge the high cost of existing medicines and the absence of treatment for many of the diseases affecting our patients.

 

Today, one third of the world's population lacks access to essential medicines. In the poorest parts of Africa and Asia this figure rises to half of the population. Too often, MSF cannot treat patients because the medicines are too expensive or they are no longer produced. Sometimes, the only drugs we have are highly toxic or ineffective and nobody is looking for a better cure.

 

MSF is advocating for a combination of policies to lower drug prices on a sustainable basis. These strategies include encouraging generic competition, voluntary discounts on branded drugs, global procurement, and local production. MSF is also pushing for increased research into neglected diseases – such as tuberculosis, malaria, sleeping sickness, and leishmaniasis – through increased funding, investing in research and development (R&D) capability in developing countries, and supporting alternative models for R&D. To address the issue of abandoned drugs, MSF is calling on companies and governments to find solutions to bring unprofitable but medically necessary drugs back into production. MSF is also supporting developing countries in codifying into law the safeguards that are allowed under international trade rules in order to protect access to medicines.

As a medical humanitarian organisation, it is fundamentally unacceptable to MSF that access to essential medicines is increasingly more difficult, particularly for the most common global infectious diseases. Launched in November 1999, The Access to Essential Medicines Campaign is the vehicle through which MSF is advocating for lower prices of existing medicines, to bring abandoned drugs back into production, to stimulate research and development for diseases that primarily affect the poor, and to overcome other barriers to access.