Pharmaceutical companies making essential cancer medicines should learn from the debacle in Africa around 2000 when HIV/AIDS patients were dying in millions while effective treatment existed but was not accessible due to refusal of pharma companies to make HIV/AIDS medicines available at fair and affordable prices. Pharma companies finally gave in, after a long legal battles, but it was 5 years too late, causing millions to die unnecessarily.

We should not allow them to make the same mistake with access to essential cancer medicines in 2025. If the pharma companies cannot make their products available in Africa at fair and affordable prices through Access programmes, they should give licenses to the Medicines Patent Pool, so that generic companies can produce them at affordable prices.

Wilbert Bannenberg from the Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation talks to us about accountability of pharmaceutical companies to provide access to cancer medicines:

You can download the presentation here >

About the Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation

The Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation is a non-profit public good Foundation since 2018. The mission of the Foundation is to ensure that medicines and other medical technologies are available, affordable, and accessible to everyone. In this context, the Foundation values fair pricing and distribution in line with binding and non-binding national, European, and international legal and human rights standards.