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Getting medicine for the poor
Level 1 |
Elementary
2
M
ost of the news in the
newspapers is bad but
sometimes there is a story with
good news. This is one of those stories.
Millions of people around the world
suffer from AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis
and other serious diseases. There are
medicines to treat these diseases but,
for people in poor countries, these
medicines are too expensive to buy.
When a pharmaceutical company
produces a new medicine, they receive a
special licence called a patent. This
licence means that the new medicine or
drug is protected for a period of 20
years. The company that produced the
drug can fix the price of the drug and
no other company is allowed to produce
the same drug or a copy of the drug for
20 years. At the moment, these patents
operate all over the world, both in rich
countries and in poor countries. The
drugs companies say that they need
patents so that they can get the money
to pay for research to find new drugs
and medicines. In rich countries people
usually have enough money to pay for
these drugs, but in poor countries
people cannot afford to buy them and
cannot treat diseases like AIDS and
malaria.
Last month, however, a group of experts
published a report which says that
patents are very bad for poor countries.
The report says that drug companies do
not want to find new medicines for
diseases of poor people in poor
countries. It says that poor countries
should be allowed to make copies of
drugs and that if they cannot produce
these copies themselves, they should be
allowed to buy cheap drugs without
patents from other countries.
The authors of the report were lawyers,
scientists and a senior director from the
drug company Pfizer. Of course, the
pharmaceuticals industry does not agree
with the report. “We need patents so
that we can develop new medicines to
fight disease both in the developed and
the developing world”, said a
spokesman. But the report is the first
sign that there might be a change in the
patent system. This change could save
millions of lives in the world’s poorest
countries. This really is good news!
