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. H.pylori infects one in 6 persons globally and is a causative agent of ulcers.

The addition enables mass drug donation of the drug to over 160 WHO member states by all UN foundations and large philanthropic NGOs and advises the MoH of WHO member states to procure and provide drug at cheapest price possible.

You can read the original application, the expert review and the support letter from MSF here: http://www.who.int/selection_medicines/committees/expert/17/application/Omeprazole/en/index.html

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.
Read more »

Download a pdf of the press release

Download the April 16, 2009 UAEM letter to AAU

Read the November 12, 2008 AAU response to our initial letter

Read our original October 15, 2008 letter to AAU

Read AAU’s June 10, 2008 endorsement of the Eshoo-Barton legislation

Read AAU’s May 2, 2008 comment on the legislation

Contact: Eleanor Blume
Phone: (781) 640-7750
Email: eleanor dot blume at gmail dot com

For Immediate Release

AAU ONCE AGAIN ENDORSES LEGISLATION THAT WILL IMPEDE ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE BIOLOGIC DRUGS

UAEM CALLS ON AAU TO WITHDRAW SUPPORT

The Association of American Universities (AAU) has once again endorsed legislation, (newly numbered H.R. 1548 in the new Congress), that would impede access to lower-cost follow-on biologics such as vaccines and cancer treatments. The AAU previously declined to withdraw its endorsement from H.R. 5629 of the previous Congress, the “Pathway for Biosimilars Acts,” following a call to do so from Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM). The new bill, as with the previous one, would effectively increase the length of patents on biologic drugs by allowing market registration data exclusivity of up to 14.5 years, delaying the onset of cheaper follow-on biologics while inhibiting patent challenges and impeding access to these essential medicines. This is in contrast to the normal five years of market registration data exclusivity currently in place for small-molecule drugs. Alternative legislation proposed by a bi-partisan group from the House and Senate includes more reasonable terms of data exclusivity is now available.

UAEM has argued that this obviously commercially-motivated provision is not in line with the non-profit mission of the university.

Read more »

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. As usual, it’s hard to find a day that matches all academic schedules so please feel free to hold your event when it makes the most sense for your chapter.

Check out the Global Access to Medicines Day webpage at www.essentialmedicine.org/action where you can download the toolkit on how to reach out to scientists at your university and educate & involve them in your global access licensing efforts (a packet to hand out to scientists will be up soon). The toolkit has lots of great information and helpful event suggestions that you can use as ideas to kickstart your school’s action! Also, be sure to register your chapter’s event soon! When you register you can request awesome UAEM stickers and buttons for your events.

The Global Access to Medicines Day is part of the larger Global Health Week of Action coordinated by University Coalitions for Global Health (UCGH), of which UAEM and many other allied student organizations are members. The Week of Action features activities and events on issues around sexual and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, health care workers, access to essential medicines, and human rights (for more info: http://www.ucgh.org/take-action/2009-global-health-week-of-action/) .

To find out more about UAEM’s Global Access to Medicines Day, please join us on one of two upcoming conference calls to explain the action:
- Sunday, March 15th @ 5pm PST/8pm EST
- Thursday, March 19th @ 6pm PST/9pm EST
Conference Call #: (712) 775-7000
Access Code: 314382#
Note: you can press *6 to mute/un-mute yourself on the call

And don’t forget to register your chapter’s action!

Looking forward to being in touch and hearing about the headway you make through your action this Spring.

In Solidarity,
Taylor, Gloria and Patricia