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Developing Nations and the Compulsory License: Maximizing Access to Essential Medicines While Minimizing Investment Side Effects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Robert C. Bird
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Extract

Tens of millions of adults and children die each year from illnesses that are treatable or preventable with existing medicines. Each year over 500 million people are infected with malaria, and the disease kills two million people annually. Hundreds of thousands more die annually from a myriad of lesser known diseases including diphtheria, measles, tetanus, and syphilis. Approximately 30 percent of the world’s population, over 1.7 billion people, has inadequate access or no access at all to essential medicines.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of these illnesses are contracted in poor countries. Four million lives could be saved annually through prompt diagnosis and treatment of illnesses in Africa and Southeast Asia alone, and access to pharmaceutical drugs could likely save millions more. Many of the health problems facing the developing world do not arise from lack of understanding of complex diseases. Rather, the problem arises from a striking lack of availability of life-saving medicines for the consumers that need these medicines the most.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , Summer 2009 , pp. 209 - 221
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2009

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