2011 marks the ten-year anniversary of two events that have helped shape people’s ability in developing countries to access quality, affordable medical care.
First, the signing of the Doha Declaration, in which governments affirmed the need to prioritize health over trade: access to affordable medicines over intellectual property rights. Second, is the decision to create a “war chest” to fight the developing world’s biggest killer diseases: HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Through the Global Fund, unprecedented levels of donor money were channeled towards saving lives. But a decade later, the struggle to access medicines in developing countries continues and global health is suffering from a sudden shortfall in funding, as donor countries leave the Fund in dire financial straights.
These are some of the barriers to medical care that people in developing countries encounter every day. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières’s (MSF) Access Campaign was created just over ten years ago in order to try, with others, to bring down some of these barriers that restricted our ability as a medical humanitarian organization to give patients the best care we can. Read the Access to Essential Medicines: Ten Stories That Mattered in 2011
Photo: Kenya 2011 © Bruno De Cock/MSF
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