- University Homepage
- About
- Edinburgh Sustainability
- INCLUDES
- News includes
- Access for all to life-saving drugs
New University policy helps to ensure access for all to life-saving drugs
The University of Edinburgh is one of the first universities in the UK to adopt a humanitarian agenda for the licensing of its medical research.
As a result of this new policy, life-saving drugs developed in campus laboratories could soon be made available to populations in lesser developed countries that would previously have been unable to afford them.
Universities Allied for Essential Medicines
The University has worked with students from the group Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) to take forward the initiative.
Being a medical student and having travelled to various poverty-stricken areas of the world, I'm keenly aware of the problem of access to essential medicines.
Mori Mansouri
UAEM UK national coordinator & 4th year Edinburgh medical student
Each year, around 10 million people die due to lack of access to existing therapies. Mr Mansouri, UAEM UK national coordinator, believes that students should demand that their University recognise its own role in the access crisis, and ask for life-saving drugs developed in their labs to be made affordable to people in the developing world.
Professor David Webb of the School of Clinical Sciences & Community Health at the College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine was a key player in ensuring that the ideas behind the campaign had traction within the University.
A change in approach
The College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine is a hub for research into how drugs can be created to combat diseases in the world's poorer countries. It struck Professor Webb that drawing on the College's pool of expertise in this area would help meet the University's obligations to the wider world.
Universities have to some extent a dual responsibility: one as public bodies to do good where possible, but also as charities to recoup adequately the costs of their activities, and to support their activities through commercialisation.
Professor David Webb
School of Clinical Sciences & Community Health
Mr Mansouri and Professor Webb concluded that these aims could be met through commercialisation in the developed world and allowing drugs to be used more affordably there.
This approach will now be the premise of any discussion between the University and a pharmaceutical company about the development of a new drug. It's a precedent that should signal to pharmaceutical companies a sea change in the way health-related technologies are made available to poorer countries, and persuade them of the powerful reputational advantages in such a move.
The source of innovation
Professor Webb feels it is important to remember that universities have been the seedbeds for innovation in medical research for decades.
If you look at the big blockbuster drugs from the last 30 to 40 years many of them emerged from work at universities. Pharmaceutical companies understandably take a lot of credit for what they achieve but much of it is built on the efforts of universities. Industry benefits hugely from the work of universities.
Professor David Webb
School of Clinical Sciences & Community Health
He hopes that the initiative will allow some of the University's leading researchers to work with groups such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the area of research commercialisation.
Positive reactions
The policy is part of a broader drive by the University to participate in international collaborations to improve healthcare for poorer countries and promote innovation. The initiative has been warmly welcomed by students at the University, and by Professor Webb's colleagues.
We are absolutely delighted to do whatever it is we can to support education, access to research and access to medicine for developing countries. We see this as an absolutely central part of the overall mission of the College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine.
Jonathan R Seckl
Director of Research, College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine
Professor Webb and Mr Mansouri hope that the University's policy will help forge a new consensus on the global effort to make essential medicines available to all.
This article was published on Feb 11, 2011