Our issues

Ten million people die each year from diseases that have available cures. Tragically, the essential medicines to treat such diseases are lacking throughout much of the world. Nearly a third of humanity does not have regular access to essential medicines, and in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia this figure rises to over 50%. During the fifteen seconds it takes to read this paragraph, five people have died from preventable causes.

Many diseases affecting millions of the world’s poorest remain entirely overlooked. Countless people suffer in developing countries from sleeping sickness, lymphatic filariasis, blinding trachoma, and other “neglected diseases,” because these destitute sick do not constitute a sufficient market opportunity to attract commercial research and development. In fact, only 10% of research and development (R&D) dollars go towards research into 90% of the world’s health problems.

The health burden facing millions in the developing world is of the most pressing moral issues of our time, yet also one of the most solvable. In this environment, universities have a critical role to play. Many of our most important medicines were invented at universities; their accessibility around the world depends critically on how universities manage their intellectual property. As research institutions that exist to serve the public good, universities are natural leaders in the search for new treatments for neglected diseases.

Watch UAEMer Mike Gretes speaking about UAEM's ideas at a TEDxTalks event at UBC in 2008: