Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline should be congratulated for breaking industry ranks and taking a major step toward helping poor people in developing countries to get better access to medicines, says international agency Oxfam.
However GSK’s initiative this week is just the beginning. “Big Pharma seems to be realizing slowly that poor people in developing countries face huge and different barriers to good health, and so to break into these big new emerging markets the industry must change its existing “strong patents, high cost” way of doing business,” Oxfam spokesperson Rohit Malpani said.
GSK said it would cut the price of all its medicine to the world’s 52 poorest countries. “This is the first time a company has acknowledged that access to medicines is relevant to its entire portfolio of medicines, and not just for HIV and AIDS, TB and malaria,” said Malpani. “This alone won’t get the job done. Companies should reduce prices for poor people in middle-income countries too and show flexibility on intellectual property to stimulate generic competition – especially from low-cost manufacturers such as those in India – which is necessary for sustainable price reductions in poor countries.”
See full Press Release.
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