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According to the World Health Organisation, some 2 billion
people lack access to basic health care. Many of the worlds
poorest people do not have access to medicines for preventable
diseases. Each year 11 million people die from infectious
diseases, many of them because they cannot afford basic medicines
(Oxfam).
 World
Trade Organisation rules and the Treaty for Intellectual Property
Rights increases the length of patents and will make medicines
more expensive for the worlds poorest people. Pharmaceutical
companies are making large profits from the new patent rules;
they are attempting to justify this by claiming that more
will be spent on research and development. However the majority
of the research and development goes to non-life threatening
diseases such as Hayfever in the USA and Europe rather than
life saving issues like Tuberculosis in Africa. Only 10% of
research targets the diseases that comprise 90% of the global
disease burden, (Oxfam).
Now is a vital time to be writing because of campaign groups'
recent success in asking for the fair trade of medicines.
You may have heard that GlaxoSmithKline pulled out of a court
case against the South African Government as a result.
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