Tag: Pharmaceuticals
Medicines360 and the Rise of Non-Profit Pharmaceuticals
Reproductive health is becoming an increasingly important concern in developing countries, where it represents the confluence of three essential issues: women’s rights, health, and economics. Increasing the availability of contraceptives can address all three of these issues, yet pharmaceutical companies are often reluctant to pursue these projects because the available profit margin is small. But effective solutions to this and other global health problems need not be reliant on large pharmaceutical companies.
Public-Private Partnerships: A Double-Edged Sword
The varied financial models for funding global health have caused uncertainty regarding the ideal structure of global health organizations. With a number of interests at stake – including those of governments, profit-driven initiatives, and philanthropic organizations – there are often conflicts between groups whose goals do not align.
Funding Orphan Drugs: Pitfalls of the Orphan Drug Act
The debate over cost and access to drugs has long raged between patients, health advocates, and pharmaceutical companies. For patients with “orphan diseases,” or rare diseases which affect fewer than 200,000 people in the United States, this debate becomes particularly acute, as the Orphan Drug Act passed by Congress in 1983 threatens to drive up prices for highly specialized treatments. While the Orphan Drug Act has helped to bring drugs for rare diseases to millions of patients and continues to stimulate research and development of orphan drugs, the law is certainly not without its problems and caveats.
Price Discrimination in Pharmaceutical Companies: The Method to the “Madness”
Pharmaceutical companies, or what critics call “big pharma,” are often condemned for charging prices above marginal cost and price discriminating between different countries (calculating each country’s ability to pay). These practices lie at the heart of feuds such as compulsory licensing, a strategy employed by countries to obtain generic drugs. However, the economics of price discrimination demands a closer look.
DNA Vaccines: Scientific and Ethical Barriers to the Vaccines of the Future
As flu season rolls around once more, DNA vaccines have regained attention in scientific debates. However, the development of a universal flu vaccine has stalled due to a number of concerns including the efficacy, safety, and ethics of conducting clinical trials in developing countries.
Bullying the Boss? Compulsory Licensing for Antiretroviral Drugs in Brazil and Thailand
By Shaira Bhanji Global Health Finance Columnist Underdeveloped, HIV-burdened regions of the world have the potential to make strides toward better survival outcomes, but they lack key resources. Simple antiretroviral drugs such as Efavirenz and Kaletra have been shown to lower deaths from HIV/AIDS by as much as 84 percent, yet the prices of these […]
