A women checks the labels on bottles of medication. Access to medi

Access to medicines

Access to medicines: It should be easily available

Medicines shouldn't be a luxury. The Access Campaign focuses in particular on bringing down prices and ensuring medicines are available in countries that need them, and stimulating research into improved treatment options.

Access to medicines has been an issue for decades. In 1999, the HIV/AIDS epidemic was raging in developing countries. Lifesaving HIV medicines were available, but were priced out of reach. This was in stark contrast to the situation in wealthy countries, where this deadly disease had been transformed into a chronic and manageable condition.

At the same time, MSF medical staff lacked adequate treatments for neglected diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and African sleeping sickness, because pharmaceutical corporations did not consider it profitable enough to develop drugs for people who could not afford to pay high prices.

This is when MSF started the Access Campaign to overcome the many barriers that prevent people from getting the treatment they need to stay alive and healthy.

Key numbers

We joined the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative to make access to medicines a reality, saving millions of lives.

2,003

2,003

The year the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative was founded

6

6

deadly diseases now have treatment

13

13

treatments have been developed since 2003

MSF's impact

People picket over the price of insulin in South Africa.
01 MSF Access Campaign

In response to the need for better treatments, vaccines and diagnostic tests MSF set up its Access Campaign in 1999 to improve care for patients.

The aims of MSF’s Access Campaign are to:

1. Push for price cuts to medicines, vaccines and diagnostic tests by stimulating the production of more affordable generic products     

2. Act as a watchdog to ensure that the corporate interests don’t win out over public health needs     

3. Steer the direction of medical research toward urgently needed new drugs, vaccines and tests that don’t exist yet or are not tailored to the needs of people in developing countries     

4. Scope out, support and monitor new models to fund medical research that respond to medical rather than corporate needs and do not rely on charging sky high prices for the final product to pay for the research     

A cartoon shows a large upright ring depicting luxury, and people with a rope around it, pulling it down.
02 Drugs For Neglected Diseases Initiative
dndi.org

In 2003, MSF joined forces with six other organisations from around the world to establish the Drugs For Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), with the aim of developing new drugs or new formulations of existing drugs for patients suffering from the most neglected communicable diseases.

DNDi seeks to address unmet needs by taking on projects that others are unable or unwilling to pursue. 

Visit the the Drugs For Neglected Diseases Initiative website
Access to medicines relies on research. These brochures and notebooks are from MSF Scientific Days in London 2019
03 MSF field research
scienceportal.msf.org

MSF is well known for its humanitarian medical work, but it has also produced important research based on its field experience with vulnerable communities .

This website archives MSF's scientific articles and makes them available free, with full text and in an easily searchable format. 

The MSF Science Portal
A palm filled with pills.
04 Increased research

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

Access to medicine is crucial, such as these boxes of medicine used in the treatment of Cryptococcal meningitis
05 Abandoned drugs

Some treatments are no longer produced. MSF is calling on companies and governments to find solutions to bring unprofitable but medically necessary drugs back into production.

People protest over equity for Covid-19 vaccines.
06 Safeguards

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.

video

Women fighting for access to medicines

FROM THE FRONTLINES

Women fighting for access to medicines

What has the ‘Fix The Patient Laws’ coalition achieved?

MSF launched the Access Campaign in 1999 against the backdrop of the HIV/Aids epidemic that was raging in developing countries.

Candice Sehoma, Access Campaign advocacy officer, gives us a brief insight into what the Fix The Patient Laws coalition has achieved in South Africa when it comes to bringing down prices and ensuring medicines are available to people.

Steps taken to get access to medicines

For HIV medicines, the price ultimately came down by more than 99 percent, from over US$10,000 to treat one person for one year in 2000, to less than $100 per year today, by breaking down corporate monopolies to allow robust competition and the production of affordable generic drugs, primarily from India.

In the early 2000s, we pushed for a switch to more effective treatment for malaria through the Access Campaign’s ‘ACT Now’ campaign, urging countries to switch to artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT), which most countries in Africa did by 2008.

In 2003, we co-founded the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), an innovative non-for-profit drug development model to develop treatments for neglected patients, which has delivered eight treatments for malaria, paediatric HIV, kala azar (leishmaniasis), Chagas disease, and sleeping sickness, including the recently launched all-oral sleeping sickness treatment fexinidazole.

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, the Access Campaign advocated on nutrition and vaccines and achieved success in improving the quality of food aid provided to children facing malnutrition through the ‘Starved for Attention’ campaign. The team also achieved critical affordable access for humanitarian organisations to the pneumonia vaccine for children in emergency contexts through the ‘A Fair Shot’ campaign.

With the introduction of new medicines to cure hepatitis C starting in 2013, the world was confronted with the $1,000 pill – a situation which, alongside the exorbitant and escalating prices of cancer drugs and insulin, put front and centre the global crisis of high medicine prices.
By supporting legal challenges to the monopoly held by corporations like Gilead Sciences in multiple countries, we, along with other civil society organisations, have contributed to price reductions of key hepatitis C medicines to roughly $1 per pill in selected countries. But tens of millions of people are still waiting for the cure.

Two staff members hold signs calling for access to medicines

Access to medicines

What we as a civil society movement demand is change, not charity. Dr James Orbinski, MSF President, delivering Nobel Peace Prize lecture, 1999
FROM THE FRONTLINES

Read more

A cartoon of a woman walking on an HIV/Aids ribbon, trying to reach medication
GET INVOLVED

How you can help

msf.org.za

Your support matters. With your help we can overcome barriers to access to essential medicines, and stimulate research and development for neglected diseases.

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