Access to Medicines in Developing Countries Essay Example for Free

Access to Medicines in Developing Countries Essay One of the appalling statistics that came out of a survey in 2000 was the percentage of the HIV/AIDS infections in Africa. It was reported that nearly 80% of the total number of affected people was from this continent. Now if this report sounds dreadful, one might get a bigger shock by looking at the picture of modern healthcare methodologies in Africa. Despite being a developing nation, Africa gets scarcely one percent of modern drugs. The value of all medical drugs transported to Africa amounts to the expenses spent on advertising by the leading pharmaceutical companies in the United States of America. Under the light of this reality, this paper is going to discuss the genuine scenario in developing countries that don’t have an affordable access to life-saving medicines. It might be noted that access to medicines is a fundamental human right, and there is a yawning gap between crisis and cure in a capitalistic social setup. Due to increased political pressure, many drug manufacturing companies have been forced to review their business strategies and produce medicines that are relatively less expensive. Moreover, it is also mandatory to formulate a well-organized delivery system that would ensure a proper and timely delivery of the medicinal goods to Africa and other Third World countries. Modern healthcare remedies are needed to be deployed in order to combat the menace of HIV and other diseases in the underprivileged tropics. (â€Å"Access to Medicine in Developing Countries†, 2000) Access to medicine in developing countries has always been a matter of great disputation, mainly because of the convoluted interaction between macroeconomic development, patterns of diseases and healthcare requirements and provisions. It has been an inescapable paradox for many countries where the national economic status can only be attained by improved health status. Hence, lack of supply of life-saving drugs hinders the scope and opportunity of national healthcare. (â€Å"Improving Access to Medicines in Developing Countries†, 2005) The impoverished countries find it a mammoth task to meet both ends successfully. It has been proposed that only a large scale international funding can inject some fruitful results in the context of healthcare and economic boost. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) are working together to provide the best possible framework for improved health status as well as the macroeconomic development of developing nations. WTO is primarily concerned with the organized growth of a capitalist, free market global economy. On the other hand, WHO is focused on improving health conditions by providing healthcare models that can be applied to both developed as well as developing nations. Institutional and public sector frameworks play a crucial role in realizing the objectives of WHO to the best possible extent. The newly incepted Global Health Fund is working relentlessly to provide remedies for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria. The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS agreement) are held, in some cases, as obstacles for access to essential medicines in developing countries. Ever since WTO finalized the TRIPS agreement in April 1994, this issue has been a matter of great debate. The main problems in accessing medicines, as viewed by experts, are the increasing expenses, which can shoot up to 66% of total expenditure in developing nations. Today’s scenario as far as having access to essential medicines is concerned is an alarming one, with more than one-third of the world’s population are deprived of indispensable drugs. According to the WHO, developing countries, especially those in Asia and Africa, must be provided with an all-encompassing solution in terms of health priority problems, and they must be able to gain access to life-saving medicines at an affordable deal. To make matters worse, the poorer section of societies in developing countries find themselves all at sea due to their inability to physically access life-saving drugs. So both availability and affordability are the key areas of concern. Now under these circumstances, the introduction of strong and worldwide product patents for drugs, as implemented through the TRIPS agreement, may cause drastic increase in prices for essential medicines. The ‘legal monopoly’ that comes with such rigid patent system prevents anybody from producing, selling or distributing medicines in an unauthorized manner. Even if there is no patent laws, access to medicines is going to be a problem for the developing countries, due to adequate purchasing capabilities and required infrastructure. Majority of the medicines for HIV/AIDS are still under ‘live’ patent coverage. It doesn’t make for affordable access to such medicines either. And since more than 95% of HIV/AIDS affected people are from developing countries, and 50% of them belong to the productive age group of below 25 years, serious socio-economic consequences are perceived with very little signs of relief. Before TRIPS were put to effect, most developing countries and some developed countries did not impose patent laws on medicines even if they were manufactured with innovative technological aids. But today, most of these nations being WTO members have to enforce the patent laws laid down by TRIPS. This has led to hike in prices of patented medicines. It is worth noticing that even under the TRIPS guidelines, patents are to be given only on applications received from 1995 onwards for new therapeutic inventions. So any medicine manufactured before 1995 should not be unaffordable for the developing nations. Manufacturers of the newer and more innovative pharmaceutical products file for patents only in countries where business of piracy runs rampant. Parallel import of drugs is another important issue that came into consideration after the TRIPS agreement. The Intellectual Property Rights owners of specific brands of medicines face problems when goods, legally distributed in the market of one country, are imported to another without the necessary legal authorization. Now, as long as there is no discrepancy in Intellectual Property Rights in two different countries, article 6 of TRIPS defends parallel import. But considering the economic side of such imports, it might be noted that price of the same medicine in one country may rise or fall to a great extent in another. So developing countries, without violating the Intellectual Property Rights protection, may find a way out to access essential but expensive drugs from its neighboring countries. (Watal, J. 2000) In addition to what is discussed above, one must bear in mind the supply side process concerning manufacture and distribution of medicines. The specific issue related to accessibility to medicines is directly linked with the development and implementation of more efficient and cost-effective measures in manufacturing and distributing drugs. A number of speculative theories and ideologies have been put forward to address the issue of maximizing the available resources to achieve a standardized health status around the globe. However, the aim of this paper is not to get into a particular ideological standpoint, or to promote distinct solutions, but to gain a deeper insight into the real constraints of manufacturing and distributive activities. One has to take into account the diverse theoretical concepts, the macroeconomic environment of international economics and technological nuances of the pharmaceutical sectors. Once we identify the constraints, it will be easier to suggest feasible solutions in terms of easy and regular access to medicines for the developing countries. The policies adopted by pharmaceutical companies are worth taking a look at.

The Asian As Superior Myth Essays -- essays research papers

The author, Ronald Takaki, wishes to illustrate that the perceptions of Asian Americans as a "model minority" are not entirely accurate. Takaki writes that the facts and figures used to compare Asian-Americans to other, less successful minority groups are misleading. For example, the author writes that although Japanese Americans are seen as upwardly mobile, they have not yet achieved equality. The essay states that "while Japanese American men in California earned an average income comparable to Caucasian men in 1980, they did so only by acquiring more education and working more hours." In addition, the author found that while some Asian American groups do have higher family incomes than Caucasians, at the same time the Asian American families are larger and have more members of working age than Caucasian families. The author's purpose is to show the reader that although Asian Americans are portrayed as "successful" when compared to other minority groups, they still have ground to make up before they begin to accurately approach the ranks of the Anglo majority. The author uses his own personal experiences as the grandson of agricultural laborers to relay to the reader than he, too, can relate to the plight of Asian Americans in this country. The essay was written to show and give reasons why Asian Americans are seen by other minority groups as a "model minority." The author attempts to show that this i...

“5th grade autobiography” and “the writer” Essay

Both Dove’s and Wilbur’s poems are written from the perspective of an older writer looking back at youth. Although in â€Å"5th Grade Autobiography† the author writes of her own youth from a first person perspective whereas the in â€Å"The Writer† the author writes about his daughter’s youth from an outside perspective, both wonderfully impart the blissful feeling of childhood through vivid descriptions of the soft and pleasant nuances that make childhood so blissful. Rita Dove shows us her  world through the lens of a fifth grader. She envies her older brother despite the fact that he is depicted as young and inexperienced, shown by his poor choice to squat in poison ivy. Her grandparents have a very strong presence and are given just as lively a role as her young brother. Pictures of luminous felines come to mind when she describes her grandmother, a youthful and vibrant staple in her world. Grandfather smells of lemons, a bright, zesty, lively smell, and is imprinted in her life memories of Christmases. Richard Wilber manages to conjure a similarly blissful/childish world encompassed by the sounds of a typewriter, beautiful linden windows, and the majestic and dreamlike positioning of his daughters room. He pulls us further into this blissful illusion by using words and descriptions alluding to a ship, drifting into the deep open water away from the rest of the world. After bringing us into the peaceful settings of a child’s world, both authors send us plummeting into deep thought. Dove does so by abruptly letting us knowthat this grandfather is no longer alive but his memory or â€Å"hands† still exist in our  minds as it did when it was written in this 5th grader’s autobiography. What does this say about her grandfather’s existence and death? Perhaps that recording it through a photo or even the writing of a 5th grader, it has become eternal. This pushes us to think about the sheer power of writing our thoughts and experiences down on paper. Richard also makes us consider the strength and power that writing has even for youth. The setting of his daughter’s writing turns into the prison trapping the delicate starling. The heart-wrenching struggle of the songbird to free itself from the  confines of the room, smashing its delicate body against the window until it finally slips free, it equated to the daughters struggle to get her words on the page. The young writer continuously pauses her finger-smashing to collect herself and continue on in her writing, similar to the bird repetitively picking up and trying again to find freedom. The humped and bloody bird is seen as his daughter, fighting with all its life force to free itself from the constraints we humans feel as writers until we finally break free, the same struggle his daughter faced in that very room.

Minimum Wage Of The United States Of America And Australia

Introduction In this globalization era, as various countries see growth in their economy, there has also been significant differences in the wages set to employees in different countries. The lowest wages set by the law that are fixed to a particular amount which is also defined to be the price floor below which workers shall not sell their labor, has its own effects. The minimum wage law came into force as a matter of social justice amongst the low-wage workers, also to reduce exploitation and see that workers can afford the standard basic living expenses and necessities, not to increase the unemployment rate, indeed to increase the employment rate. Critically speaking minimum wage increases poverty and unemployment and thus damages to business at times. However, despite its drawbacks, minimum wages has some benefits too. In this essay the comparison of minimum wage of between the two countries; United States of America and Australia and the benefits of the minimum wage will be under discussion. Comparison: USA Australia In United States the minimum wage is been set by a network of federal, state, and local laws. Workers are generally been paid no less than the statutory minimum wage as specified by the government. As of July 2009, the federal government officially ordered a nationwide minimum wage level of $7.25 per hour. The federal minimum wage was at its highest at 10 dollars in 1968, as measured in 2014. Since then there were controversial debates over theShow MoreRelatedGlobal Ethics for the United States676 Words   |  3 PagesThe United States of America What is are EXPORT AND IMPORT trades for this country (or a number of trades)? More than two-thirds of the United States’ exports are material goods. The other third is made up of capital goods (used to produce other other goods for a company). 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Their weaknesses are heavy dependence on income from North America and limited chances for significant growth through acquisitions (Jurvevicius, 2013). According to the SWOT Analysis, their opportunities are growth of entertainment industries in emerging markets and increase of motion picture production to newRead MoreWalt Disney Company s Organization967 Words   |  4 Pagesof the company â€Å"Disney’s strengths are: strong product portfolio, brand reputation, competency in acquisitions, diversified businesses, and localization of products† (Jurevicius, 2013). Their weaknesses are heavy dependence on income from North America and limited chances for significant growth through acquisitions (Jurvevicius, 2013). According to the SWOT Analysis, their opportunities are growth of entertainment industries in emerging markets and increase of motion picture production to new