Students at Edinburgh Seeing Success on Global Access

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.

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Students at Edinburgh spent two years campaigning for the university to act. Last November, the Student Association Annual General Assembly voted unanimously in favour of a motion demanding acceptance of the licensing policy.

Mori Mansouri, UK National Coordinator for Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, described Edinburgh's adoption of the policy as a major step forward. "We want to ensure every health-related innovation developed in campus laboratories is made available in the developing world at the lowest possible cost, and increase the amount and impact of university research on neglected diseases," he said.

* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Read the whole article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/26/cheaper-medicines-edinburgh-university