The Pros And Cons Of Health Impact Fund

I do find the Health Impact Fund (HIF) as a desirable option, but at the same time just as Ryan described on his post, change is never easy, being this in my opinion the biggest disadvantage for HIF. For many years there have been problems throughout the years around the world regarding to access to medicines, especially in low and middle income countries. TRIPS has raised many problems in global health, and while different programs and solutions have been tried, still many developing countries do not have the facilities needed to produce essential medicines and 80% of money that families in low income countries spend in health care is still related to medicines 1. As described on this week’s lecture, licensing a product does not solve the

As described by Kilama, many actions have been taken over the last two decades to resolve the 10/90 gap such as policies prioritizing funding for health research, developing capacities of credible public and private SSA health research institutions, activities of international NGOs undertaking research aimed at resolving the gap, and the setting up of research based mechanisms to ensure access to new effective products for the treatment and prevention of poverty-related diseases 3. But after all of these if we take for example HIV, there is not enough competition for the production of generic drugs for the second and third lines of antiretroviral therapies and the strong TRIPS protection. HIF make a good point about a key reason behind the 10/90 gap, which the misalignment of corporate and social goals. While society hopes to maximize the total health gain, companies are seeking to maximize their profits from each drug 4. As described on the video by Pogge, moral pressure on the leaders of pharmaceutical companies will not change how the system is working and will certainly not provide more access to medicines to developing countries due to the shareholders and