Pharma industry improves access to medicines in developing world

Writing for the Financial Times, Clive Cookson covers the Foundation’s latest research report — the first 10-year analysis on how the pharmaceutical industry has performed on global health goals. The article dives deep into the findings, reporting on where progress has been made in the last ten years and where improvements can be sustained.

The article sets out with an overview of how the pharmaceutical industry has made progress in the past ten years when it comes to access to medicine. It notes the growing R&D pipeline, particularly for key diseases such malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis and reports that new medicines are supported increasingly by initiatives to help patients obtain treatment in poorer countries.

Other areas of company progress covered by the article include the number of market approvals in the last decade and the recognition of access to medicine as a strategic issue.

However, the Financial Times' article concludes with a quote from Jayasree K Iyer, Executive Director of the Access to Medicine Foundation, highlighting that progress is uneven. Only a handful of companies consistently carry the load and overall the activity concentrates on a few countries and diseases.

"We now have a workable and scalable approach for good practice in this area but we need it to be adopted in more countries by more companies for more diseases.”