Fighting the diseases of poverty, IPN book examines positive role of drugmakers

A book due to be launched in Johannesburg, South Africa, on March 5 by the Campaign for Fighting Diseases, a component of the London, UK-headquartered think-tank, the International Policy Network, contains submissions about the positive role that research-based drugmakers are and can continue to play in the overcoming of diseases in the poorest parts of the world.

Edited by Philip Stevens, the CFD's director, Fighting the Diseases of Poverty assembles a group of experts from around the world to discuss the improvements in health outcomes globally, since the middle of the 18th century, the emerging priority of aging and the burden of caring for larger populations of older people.

Other topics of discussion are the problems of accessibility of drugs, according to the authors "in large part because of a range of counterproductive government policies." The accusation that intellectual property restricts access to drugs for poorer people is dealt with and the effects of the lack of enforceable property rights (tangible and intellectual) and the weakness of the rule of law are shown to contribute to an "explosion of counterfeit drugs in less-developed countries, to the grave detriment of the health of the poor."