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Thanks to the heroic efforts of Taylor Gilliland, Gloria Tavera and many others, UAEM has just released the first edition of our newsletter. Read it here.

The newsletter will be released on a quarterly basis and in advance of the next edition we'll be asking for submissions and new ideas. Thanks to the many people who contributed to putting it together.

Cornell UAEMers Nicole Ramsey, Becky Lambert, Leanne Stratton, and Sunny Kishore, a UAEM Board Member along with Matt Price, also a UAEM Board Member who works with the Clinton Foundation, successfully petitioned the WHO to add omeprazole (a proton pump inhibitor) to the Essential Medicines List!

WHO DG Margaret Chan approved the addition recently.

Omeprazole was particularly noted for its public health relevance in the effective treatment of H.pylori, prevention of gastric cancer and other conditions.

While details are still to be worked out, from news coverage, it is clear that UAEMers at U of Edinburgh are making a difference.

Read below for excerpts from an article in The Observer.

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University forces firms to supply cheap medicines

Poor countries get drugs at cost price - or we won't licence our research to you, says Edinburgh University

* Paul Kelbie
* The Observer, Sunday 26 April 2009

Edinburgh is to become the first British university to help make cheap medicines available to the developing world by licensing research to pharmaceutical companies only on condition that poorer communities get life-saving drugs at cost price.

One in three people around the world has no access to basic medicines and 10 million children a year die for want of affordable and effective drugs. Now, under pressure from students, Edinburgh aims to force companies to supply cheap drugs in return for using patents held by the university. The idea has built on a World Health Organisation campaign supported by Bill Gates's Gates Foundation, Bill Clinton's Clinton HIV/Aids Initiative and the Department for International Development.

Global Access to Medicines Day is coming up on March 30th, 2009. We'd once again like to invite you to participate in our unified spring action to raise awareness of the dire need for universities to implement global access licensing and this year's focus on educating the scientists who actually make the discoveries.

Almost four hundred of UAEM-UC's supporters, from Japan to Uganda, and Pakistan to Palo Alto, received a letter from University of California President Mark Yudof on March 2, 2009, in response to their letters urging the adoption of a Global Access License policy for the UC's medical innovations.

President Yudof's letter, described previous examples of innovative licensing practices at the UC, and reiterated his invitation for UAEM to present its