The rich world is refusing to share vaccines with poorer countries speedily or equitably. Whereas 60% of the population in the UK is fully vaccinated, in Uganda it is only 1%. The 50 least wealthy nations, home to 20% of the world’s population, have received just 2% of all vaccine doses. The authors argue that the rich world should be ashamed. They present evidence of the corporate profits being made on vaccines and posit that pandemic profiteering is a human rights violation that demands investigation and scrutiny. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right “to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. The excess of deaths in Africa, Latin America and Asia is attributed to: a free market, profit driven enterprise based on patent and intellectual property protection, combined with a lack of political will. Contrary to claims, it is possible to make enough vaccines for the world and state that the moral scandal, enabled by corporate and political permission of mass death, is tantamount to a crime against humanity.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
In May 2010, 192 Member States endorsed Resolution WHA63.14 to restrict the marketing of food and non-alcoholic beverage products high in saturated fats, trans fatty acids, free sugars and/or salt to children and adolescents globally. The authors examined the actions taken between 2010 and early 2016 – by civil society groups, the World Health Organization (WHO) and its regional offices, other United Nations (UN) organisations, philanthropic institutions and transnational industries – to help decrease the prevalence of obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases among young people. By providing relevant technical and policy guidance and tools to Member States, WHO and other UN organisations have helped protect young people from the marketing of branded food and beverage products that are high in fat, sugar and/or salt. The progress achieved by the other actors the authors investigated appears variable and generally less robust. The authors suggest that the progress being made towards the full implementation of Resolution WHA63.14 would be accelerated by further restrictions on the marketing of unhealthy food and beverage products and by investing in the promotion of nutrient-dense products. This should help young people meet government-recommended dietary targets. Any effective strategies and actions should align with the goal of WHO to reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by 25% by 2025 and the aim of the UN to ensure healthy lives for all by 2030.
More prominent figures have joined the chorus of over 300,000 people worldwide voicing concerns about Novartis’ legal challenge against the Indian government and its impact on access to essential medicines across the globe. They include the former Swiss President, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Stephen Lewis former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, and Dr. Michel Kazatchkine, the head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
The focus of this book is on advancing innovation in medical and health technologies and ensuring that the people who need these technologies can access them, arguing that policies on these issues have to be viewed together in order to make real progress. The book describes the options available for policies involving health, intellectual property and trade, and reviews the latest developments in the three organisations that co-produced the book, seeking new ways for the three organisations to reinforce each other, ultimately to meet objectives such as the right to health and the Millennium Development Goals. It looks at ways to tailor systems so that innovation is encouraged, yielding new treatments for the diseases of the poor, and how to ensure sustainable and equitable access to these innovations. The book argues that private sector-led competition policy is the way forward on the basis that it can promote innovation, and improve access to medicines, provided that transparent and non-discriminatory procurement procedures are followed.
The impacts of climate change are currently being felt by people and communities. However, many of the most severe impacts will be felt in the decades to come. Significant barriers emerge in an effort to achieve long-term development objectives, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, a region with low capacity to adapt to the future impacts of climate change. Factoring medium- to long-term climate information into investments and planning decisions is therefore an important component of climate-resilient development. We know little about how climate information is used in Africa to make decisions with long-term consequences, or how effective it is. We know even less about the barriers to – and opportunities for – using climate information in decision-making. How, then, should governments, businesses and donors strive for climate information to achieve Africa’s long-term development objectives? The Future Climate For Africa (FCFA) programme explores these questions and seeks to challenge many of the assumptions that underlie them. To guide the programme, six case studies investigated how climate information was being used in decision-making in sub-Saharan Africa. These comprised four country case studies: Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia and a combined study of Accra, Ghana and Maputo, Mozambique; and two desk-based studies focused on long-lived infrastructure in the ports sector and the large hydropower sector. This report presents the results of the scoping phase.
This paper outlines the challenges facing environmental and occupational health and safety in Tanzania. It is mainly focused on challenges facing the growth of environmental and occupational health and safety based on chemicals’ management. Environmental and occupational health and safety was found to be very weak, largely due to lack of awareness, high level of illiteracy, weakness in the enforcement of environmental laws, and lack of environmental departments in small and large-scale enterprises. Other challenges include misdistribution of worldwide collaborating centres for World Health Organization/International Labour Organization joint efforts and standards that are not focusing on the safety and health of workers. Recommended strategies include the provision and access to information on safe handling of chemicals, training programmes for environmental health and safety, hazard and accident prevention techniques, risk and safety assessments, and promoting cleaner technologies. There should be an emphasis on development of proper materials safety data sheets based on targeted audience, cost-benefit analysis and auditing of environmental and occupational health and safety.
The European Commission has issued a new draft customs regulation that it says addresses past concerns over wrongful seizures of generic drug shipments transiting through European ports. But the new regulation does not substantively change existing rules, it said, and civil society groups say it does not go far enough. The proposal does not explain that the customs regulation is of a procedural nature, and it does not change or add to the rules defining what an intellectual property rights (IPR) infringement is. In 2008, shipments of legitimate generic medicines transiting through Europe were detained by customs authorities on allegation of IPR rights infringement. This triggered the filing of disputes at the World trade Organisation (WTO). On 11 May 2010, India requested consultations at the WTO with the European Union and the Netherlands about seizures of generic drugs coming from India and travelling via the Netherlands to developing countries in Africa and elsewhere. India said those seizures were inconsistent with the obligations of the European Union and the Netherlands of various provisions of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The dispute is ongoing and remains at the consultation phase.
Economists have predicted that tobacco consumption will double in the next 12 to 13 years in Sub-Saharan Africa unless anti-smoking policies are adopted. Besides impoverishing families, an increase in the consumption rate will result in an increase in disease burden that will generate unaffordable health costs. Implementing smoke-free policies in Africa remains a problem, however, largely due to tobacco industry interference, insufficient financial and human resources, lack of support from government officials and legislators and poor involvement of civil society. However, the author argues that poor compliance, as well as poor, often non-existent enforcement and monitoring and surveillance systems are the real threats to smoke-free laws in Africa. Therefore, there is a crucial need for efficient implementation strategies, along with proper monitoring and surveillance systems on the one hand; and on the other, a need for scientific research in order to evaluate the effectiveness of smoke-free policies in Africa.
As the nineteenth International AIDS Conference took place in Washington DC, thousands of protesters marched on the White House with a set of demands to end the epidemic. The march consisted of a coalition of AIDS advocacy and activist groups organised under the mantra ‘We Can End AIDS’. At the forefront were calls for an end to free trade deals that protesters argue make vital AIDS medicines unaffordable. They pointed out that free trade deals with the Barack Obama administration contain excessively stringent protections for pharmaceutical patents on AIDS drugs. A spokesperson for the demonstration urged governments to accept recommendations related to intellectual property rights in a July 2012 report issued by the Global Commission on HIV and The Law (included in last month's newsletter), an independent high-level legal commission made up of former heads of state and leading legal, human rights and HIV experts. The Commission recommended a moratorium on TRIPS patent enforcement on pharmaceutical products, which they argue will allow developing countries to manufacture low-cost generic medicines urgently needed for their populations.
Has health benefited from the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) process launched in 1999 by the international community? The first part of the paper examines the macro-economic constraints on health care financing and considers whether enhanced debt reduction, flexibility on fiscal deficits and the potential for increased aid would alleviate these constraints. The authors conclude that the PRSP process has not lived up to the expectations it has generated.