Tabitha Ha, who volunteered in Zambia and South Africa on the ICS programme, busts four common myths about access to medicines across the globe. You can check out and follow Tabby’s blog here.
I want to bust four common myths.
Mythbuster 1:
‘A drug problem? you must mean the war on drugs!’
No, not the highly publicized ‘drug war‘/black market mess that our society has got itself into, but something much closer to each of us. A life-threatening, unnecessary problem that affects millions, no, billions of us around the world.
I recently travelled to the Basel, Switzerland, with the Student STOPAIDS campaign, with the intention to learn more about improving access to medicines, especially access to HIV medication in developing countries. If you are reading this then I have probably bombarded your twitter with such information!
What I realised in Basel, at the UAEM conference, is that the system that drives up the cost of HIV medication is the same pharmaceutical system that significantly limits drug innovation, fails to make drugs for those that need it and keeps the costs of life-saving drugs high.
Mythbuster 2
“In the UK, and other developed countries, we have access to the drugs we need.”
It’s a comforting thought to know that we have the NHS in the UK, but do we really have access to the drugs we need?
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