Presidential Candidates Pledge Support for Fighting Neglected Diseases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Anjali Dalal
Monday, Sept 29, 2008
anjali [dot] dalal [at] yale [dot] edu

Presidential Candidates Pledge Support for Fighting Neglected Diseases

Barack Obama Builds Upon Support for Making Low-Cost Medicines Available in Developing Countries

Berkeley, CA – At the Clinton Global Initiative Thursday, United States presidential candidates Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama highlighted the importance fighting neglected diseases in developing countries. Obama in particular signaled the importance of access to medicines and his campaign released a statement saying that as president, he will "ensure that medications for malaria, AIDS, tuberculosis and neglected tropical diseases developed with U.S. taxpayer dollars are available at low costs in developing countries." Ensuring low-cost access to life-saving medicines in developing countries through open licensing and patenting strategies is a key goal for Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM).

The statement expanded on Obama's previous support for "the adoption of humanitarian licensing policies that ensure medications developed with U.S. taxpayer dollars are available off-patent in developing countries." It reinforced the Democratic Party's similar embrace of off-patent availability in its national platform.

Making publicly-funded medicines available off-patent can allow the makers of generic pharmaceutical companies to produce and sell drugs in developing countries. This approach represents little to no loss for companies as the patented medicines are too expensive for those in developing countries to purchase. Universities, which are responsible for much of the basic research that makes new drugs possible, have tremendous power to insist upon open licenses that will ensure that their research benefits the public interest.

While McCain said he would build on current initiatives to "ensure that malaria kills no more," Obama committed to providing "federal R&D funding both for the development of new malaria treatments that overcome growing drug-resistance, as well as for the development of a much needed second-generation malaria vaccine." Malaria, which has traditionally received little attention from the US medical community, kills 900,000 people each year. At CGI Thursday, NGOs and governments committed $3 billion to fight the disease.

"We are very pleased that both candidates demonstrated the importance of increasing our efforts to take on neglected diseases such as malaria which have received inadequate research support for too long," said Ethan Guillen, Executive Director of UAEM. "Senator Obama has taken the fight even further by promising to make a wide range of government-funded medicines available at low-cost in developing countries. We look forward to a similar commitment from Senator McCain and will continue to work to ensure this is a bipartisan issue."

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About UAEM

Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) is a coalition of students at nearly 40 top research institutions across the United States, Canada and United Kingdom. UAEM's mission is to ensure that people in developing countries have access to medicines developed in universities and that university medical research addresses the needs of the majority of the world's population.

As an organization which values innovation, we work to empower students to find new ways to improve access to health throughout the world.