Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 May 4;24(1):13.
doi: 10.1186/s40199-016-0151-z.

Challenges of access to medicine and the responsibility of pharmaceutical companies: a legal perspective

Saeed Ahmadiani  1 , Shekoufeh Nikfar  2
Affiliations

Challenges of access to medicine and the responsibility of pharmaceutical companies: a legal perspective

Saeed Ahmadiani et al. Daru. .

Abstract

The right to health as a basic human right- and access to medicine as a part of it- have been a matter of attention for several decades. Also the responsibilities of different parties- particularly pharmaceutical companies- in realization of this right has been emphasized by World Health Organization. This is while many companies find no incentive for research and development of medicines related to rare diseases. Also some legal structures such as "patent agreements" clearly cause huge difficulties for access to medicine in many countries. High prices of brand medicine and no legal production of generics can increase the catastrophic costs- as well as morbidity-mortality of medication in lower income countries. Here we evidently review the current challenges in access to medicine and critically assess its legal roots. How societies/governors can make the pharmaceutical companies responsible is also discussed to have a look on possible future and actions that policy makers- in local or global level- can take.

Keywords: Access to medicine; Human rights; Pharmaceutical companies; Pharmaceuticals.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Health and wealth relationship: a Increase in life expectancy by wealth; wealthier countries (higher GDP per capita) having higher life expectancy, showing a health inequality in the world; b higher prevalence of TB- as a chronic communicable disease- in low income countries. Free material from www.gapminder.org
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Lower health insurance services in lower income countries: a decrease in out-of-pocket (OOP) share of health expenditures by increase in GDP per capita (Data from World Bank [21, 22]); b increase in catastrophic expenditures by increase of OOP share; plot from Van Doorslaer et al. [7] (with copy right permission from John Wiley and Sons). These figures depict that lower income can result in lower health insurance services (higher out-of-pocket expenditure for health) and hence higher incidence of catastrophic expenditures consequently, which can cause an inequality in health and social gaps between populations
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. The right to health-Note by the Secretary-General. [http://www.who.int/medicines/areas/human_rights/A63_263.pdf]
    1. Hulme E. History of the patent system under the prerogative and at common law. Law Q Rev. 1896;46:141–154.
    1. A more detailed overview of the TRIPS agreement. [https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/intel2_e.htm]
    1. The world health report 2003- shaping the future [http://www.who.int/whr/2003/chapter1/en/index2.html]
    1. Graph of TB against GDP per capita [http://www.gapminder.org/world]

MeSH terms

Substances

LinkOut - more resources