The Global Citizen is a joint project of New Voices and the American Jewish World Service (AJWS). Throughout the year, a group of former AJWS volunteers will offer their take on global justice, Judaism, and international development. Opinions expressed by Global Citizen bloggers do not necessarily represent AJWS.
The following blog was inspired by Faigy E. Adelhak’s New Voices blog, Not First Class? Move on Back! in which she proposes that the wealthy are granted not only “material gains†but even more so, “service and life treatment gains†which supersede those of the lower classes.
As the health of our global environment is increasingly threatened, human security and health are unjustly compromised. As a common denominator, human rights must be upheld by all members of our global community. The human right to health guarantees the inalienable right to all human beings but its promise is in vain when the majority is limited from pursuing their right to health.
It is both poverty and inequality of representation in particular, which obstruct the fulfillment of this right. Poverty is not inevitable but results from an inequality which in the case of health is often instigated by overruling powers such as pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical monopoly in North America has led to a decrease in productive competition; a resulting significant increase in the prices of medicine which limits access; the counterfeiting of medicine which has been found to provoke human resistance; and property rights controversy which potentially makes health more of a political issue rather than a humane priority.
With regard to “service and life treatment gains†one can easily claim that the privileged receive better health care; this situation puts one life before another and defeats the equality intrinsic to the human right to health. Current philosopher and professor at Yale University, Thomas Pogge, suggests that wealth empowers and that this power enables its beholder to manipulate rules to their own advantage. In other words, corporations are controlling not only the production of medicines but affecting the health of millions. Pharmaceutical companies exacerbate inequality by prioritizing diseases of the rich rather than targeting diseases affecting the masses and/or particularly concentrated among the poor.
The incentive to innovate drugs for prevalent diseases of the poor such as tuberculosis, malaria and water-borne diseases (diarrhea included) has decreased because these companies are focusing their resources on diseases of the wealthy such as high blood pressure, obesity, heart disease and cancer for the sake of money. As Faigy reiterated in her blog, “money talks.†These preferences ignore the importance of sustainability and the interdependence of human security internationally. There is a bias towards so called “maintenance drugs†whose ideal customer is one who lives on but never gets better; the only person benefiting in this situation of dependency is the company. AIDS medication is an example of a maintenance drug.
The Health Impact Fund (HIF) was conceived by Incentives for Global Health, a not-for-profit organization lead by a group of international scholars and professionals dedicated to addressing health challenges affecting the world’s poor. The Health Impact Fund is a novel health system reform in response to a pharmaceutical monopoly and its negative effects. The idea recognizes that pharmaceutical companies’ practices should correlate with social value and focus on public interest; furthermore, that healthy competition is necessary to spur innovation. The Health Impact Fund revolutionizes the way medicine and innovation is incentivized.
This inclusive solution requires HIF members – pharmaceutical companies – to innovate medicine that will improve the quality of life of as many humans as possible. Companies will receive monetary rewards proportional to the number of quality-adjusted life years (QUALY, Christopher Murray) gained in total. This aspect of the proposal is expected to eliminate the bias towards development of medicines for the elite. Moreover, according to the proposal, access is expected to increase because medicine is to be offered globally at a low cost since company will be compensated from a proposed fund of six million dollars donated by supportive international governments. Hence, there is no need for counterfeiting since the medicine is made affordable and accessible. Companies are exempt from the expense of patenting their drugs and no longer have to defend their products against generic products since they are guaranteed ten years of patenting rights and compensation through the HIF . After ten years, the company must open their patent to generic companies.
As a whole, we are moving towards a sustainability conscious society which recognizes the need to replace short-term gains with long-term improvement. While the HIF is dismissed by many as too idealistic and beyond feasibility, I believe it is this positive idealism and solution based thinking that will lead us to a viable future.
For more details on the Health Impact Fund please click on the following link: Health Impact Fund will pay for medicines with greater global impact
