Jayasree K. Iyer’s Global Crusade for Equitable Cancer Care

In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where the majority of the world’s population live, late diagnosis, limited treatment access and high costs contribute to far lower survival rates of non-communicable diseases like cancer than in high-income countries.

At the Access to Medicine Foundation, Jay leads the effort in guiding pharmaceutical companies to improve the availability of lifesaving treatments globally – for both infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases such as cancer.

In an article for Cancerworld, Yeva Margaryan interviews Jayasree K. Iyer about how her early experiences shaped her path to becoming CEO of the Access to Medicine Foundation.

Sharing about her childhood, Jaaysree explains that spending time in healthcare settings as the daughter of an anesthesiologist sparked her interest in healthcare delivery early on. This led her to work as an infectious disease scientist and later to become a leader in advancing global health equity.

“I realized I didn’t want to just identify disease. I wanted to fix the systems that failed people,” the article quotes her.

The article also highlights the distinction between activism and advocacy in the global health space, with the Foundation falling into the latter category.

“Where activism demands, advocacy negotiates. And Iyer, with her command of data and fluency in diplomacy, understands the language of both pharma executives and disillusioned patients,” Yeva writes.

Throughout the conversation, Jayasree emphasises that innovation means little if lifesaving products remain out of reach for those who need them most.