Minister for International
Development Clare Short has upped the ante in the campaign to increase
access to essential medicines in the developing world.
She joined the Prime Minister, pharmaceutical industry leaders and
foreign ambassadors at a ‘power breakfast’ in 10 Downing
Street last month to push for cheaper drugs for treating Aids, TB
and Malaria in poor countries around the world.
These diseases alone cause six million deaths a year and represent
10 per cent of the world annual death toll.
Short presented a report proposing that drugs be provided by the
pharmaceutical companies at near to cost price to the poorest countries.
In return for the new deal, developing countries would guarantee
that trade tariffs are removed and that reduced cost drugs are not
re-exported.
Short welcomed the agreement: “If implemented, I believe it
will bring about widespread, sustainable and predictable access
to medicines for the poor for the first time.”
World Health Organisation director Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland said
the move was an “important contribution.”
Two of Britain’s biggest pharmaceutical companies, GlaxoSmithKline
and AstraZeneca, who sat on the Working Group chaired by Clare Short,
also backed the plan, but it will need the co-operation of the other
major international drug companies to be successful.
For details of the report, visit: www.dfid.gov.uk
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