Prof Calls for Affordable Drugs

A former head of the HIV/AIDS department at the World Health Organization implored students to participate in a cross-university effort to make medicine more affordable for the poor at a packed event yesterday.

“There are 10 million deaths each year from conditions for which effective, affordable prevention and treatment exist,” said Jim Yong Kim, who is now chair of the department of social medicine at the Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Partners in Health, an organization devoted to improving health care for the poor.

Kim’s talk, entitled “Missing Medicines: Making University Drugs Accessible to the Global Poor,” was sponsored by over a dozen groups including the Harvard chapter of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) and the Harvard AIDS Coalition (HAC).

The event was part of a UAEM National Day of Action to raise awareness about the connection between university research and global health.

To illustrate the impact students can have on drug affordability, Kim discussed the student activism that led to the launch of UAEM. In the early 1990s, Yale University licensed an exclusive patent for a newly discovered HIV drug to pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb, making the drug unaffordable for most patients in developing countries.

In 2001, a group of Yale students formed Universities Allied for Essential Medicine and pressured their university and Bristol-Myers to allow the distribution of a generic version that same year.

Asking the audience, “Are you going to take this from a Yalie?” Kim urged Harvard students to join the effort in pushing universities to amend licensing policies for new drugs so that the poor are ensured access to the fruits of academic research.

For Harvard students en route to a multitude of careers, Kim said that “having the experience right now of getting involved and watching the change happen is really something amazing.”

During the event, UAEM members circulated the Philadelphia Consensus Statement, a policy statement that the group released last year urging schools to “promote equal access to university research,” “promote research and development for neglected diseases,” and “measure research success according to impact on human welfare.”

A letter to President-elect Drew G. Faust calling for “a more socially conscious technology transfer policy” at Harvard was also available for students to sign.

Connie E. Chen ’08, a member of the Harvard branch of UAEM, explained in an interview afterward that while the connection between university licensing policies and drug affordability has not been widely discussed within the global health community, she was “astounded” by the eager responses from students, researchers, and even political leaders on the issue.

Kim’s words seemed to have convinced at least one student that she could make a difference.

“The anecdote about Yale really showed the full possibility for action that we have here at Harvard,” Jamie E. Greenman ’08 said after the talk.