UAEM encourages universities to take more responsibility for their research by adopting humanitarian policies and procedures
Description
The World Health Organization estimates that 10 million people die every year, mostly in developing countries because they’re unable to access existing drugs and vaccines. Several factors impede access to the medicines that exist, chief among them being the cost
. Generic competition is the most effective means to lower the price of medicines. For example, the price of antiretroviral therapy for HIV dropped from more than $10,000 per patient per year in 2001 to under $100 today. Unfortunately, generic drug production for people in poor countries has been harmed by trade agreements and laws that impede generic companies from producing affordable drugs. Millions die because competition cannot take place, and pharmaceutical companies wind up having exclusive rights to vital medicines. As many of these life-saving drugs are developed in campus laboratories and with public funds, universities wield substantial leverage when they license their drugs to pharmaceutical companies. That means you as a student or academic have the opportunity to save lives without even leaving your campus! UAEM proposes a simple solution: when a university licenses a promising new drug candidate to a pharmaceutical company, it should require that the company allow the drug to be made available in poor countries at the lowest possible cost. This would have virtually no financial impact on the company or university, but would ultimately result in increased access to essential medicines and many saved lives. The Global Access Licensing Framework (GALF) is UAEM’s set of guidelines that each campus technology transfer office can use to draft their own policy to ensure global access to university developed biomedical innovations. The main goals laid out in the document are:
- Access to medicines and health-related technologies for all is the primary purpose of technology transfer of health-related innovations
- Technology transfer should preserve future innovation by ensuring that intellectual property does not act as a barrier to further research. To learn more and join the UWA UAEM chapter, please email us at [email protected]
