Oagile Bethuel Key Dingake
Through the leadership of UNAIDS, the African Think-Tank on HIV, Health and Social Justice (the Think-Tank) was created in March 2015 to provide a platform for strategic thinking, leadership and collaboration to support, expand, and accelerate action and results on human rights and social justice in the context of […]
Claire Pierson and Fiona Bloomer
Restrictive abortion legislation in Northern Ireland (NI) results in approximately 1000 women per year travelling to England to access the procedure. But these women are not able to access abortion on the UK National Health Service, despite being UK tax-payers; instead they must pay as private patients. […]
Fran Quigley
Despite President Trump’s repeated promises to take on the pharmaceutical industry and drug pricing, his recently released Executive Order shows he will do no such thing. In fact, Trump hired industry executives to lead the process of drafting his policy response that now includes an industry wish list of […]
WHO Watchers in Geneva
Fran Quigley, in Geneva
The election of Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as the new director-general of the World Health Organization has dominated the news from the 70th World Health Assembly. But, arguably, it was not the most important decision the delegates […]
In his first press conference as director-general-elect of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus today made his core mission clear. “As I traveled in recent months, the message I heard around the world was that health is a rights issue,” he said. “What the world promised […]
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been elected Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the next five years. Dr Tedros, Ethiopia’s foreign minister and former health minister, believes WHO must evolve and adapt to urgent global health challenges, and “put the right to health at the core of its functions, and be […]
Fran Quigley, from the WHA in Geneva
In her final address to the World Health Assembly as WHO Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan identified access to medicines as the most contentious issue of her decade-long tenure. That struggle was engaged, she said, “especially when intellectual property and the patent system were perceived […]
Fran Quigley
At first glance, it seems that clinical trials are the much-criticized pharmaceutical industry’s best contribution to the medicines process. The industry leans on governments to fund early-stage research, then claims the patent rights to the most promising fruits of that research. That arrangement frustrates many public health advocates, […]
Gina Li
The humanitarian crisis in Syria is now in its sixth year. The rest of the world is barraged with alarming images and harrowing accounts of entire families, their homes, and their livelihoods persistently coming under attack. Amidst the overwhelming storm of brutality, a concerning pattern has emerged: the destruction of entire […]
Marie Elske Gispen
The interface between the human rights and drug control frameworks is subject to much international debate and controversy. This is particularly the case in the context of access to controlled medicines: serious negative health, socioeconomic, and human rights consequences can occur with insufficient access to pharmaceuticals. Consumption data reveals […]
