access to medicines

Corporate tax dodging is fuelling the inequality crisis, and it is poor women who pay the highest price. Join Oxfam to demand that drug companies pay their fair share of taxes, make their medicines affordable and stop undermining the fight against inequality and poverty.  

The international agency said the US and others are putting the interests of the pharmaceutical industry above the lives of people around the globe. Oxfam is calling on the UN Secretary General and world leaders to make delivering affordable medicines a priority in 2018.
 

One year after the release of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines landmark report, this paper assesses the level of implementation by countries and institutions and recommends ways to use the report to improve both innovation and access to medicines.

Oxfam welcomed a groundbreaking new report on access to medicines published today by a High Level Panel of the United Nations and called for the UN to work with governments to implement its recommendations without delay. 

Oxfam International Executive Director Winnie Byanyima says she is “honored” at her appointment by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to the first-ever High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment.

According to the World Health Organization, cancer is one of the leading causes of death around the world, with 8.2 million deaths in 2012. In low- and middle-income countries, expensive treatments for cancer are not widely available.

Insufficient innovation and a lack of access to affordable medicines are major barriers to achieving the right to health in low- and middle-income countries.

The European Commission is putting the interests of multinational drug companies above those of millions of people with no access to affordable life-saving medicines, warn Oxfam and Health Action International.

Oxfam has hailed the Indian Supreme Court’s ruling against a patent protection petition filed by multinational pharmaceutical company Novartis as a huge victory for public health.

 

 

Pharmaceutical giant Novartis is back in court this week, in a renewed attempt to block India’s right to produce affordable ‘generic’ versions of the company’s branded medicines.