Topic: Insuring Access to Affordable Pharmaceuticals
Country: Jamaica
Delegate Name: Nathanael Downes
School: Ann Arbor Community High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Jamaica position papers GLIMUN 2012 committees
Counterfeits. Patents. Poverty.
The cost of pharmaceuticals globally has seen an upward trend due to decades of accelerated genetic mutations among viruses and bacteria. Because of this increase in resistance, pharmaceutical companies have had to compensate with a massive increase in research and development. It’s not as though they are being entirely altruistic in their research however, so the cost can be summed up in a single word: patents. It is Jamaican belief that the current patent system is a good idea on a national level, but is entirely inappropriate for a global economy, seeing as Jamaican, like the citizens of many developing nations, are solely recipients of these costly pharmaceutical corporations. The intellectual property of one company could save the lives of millions around the world, but is instead held for the purpose profit. Jamaica believes that in the interest of supporting developing nations, one possible solution to the cost of pharmaceuticals is the reformation of the global patent system. I think that tackling the patent system, although borderline revolutionary, would prove to be the solution with the highest potential to reduce cost and expand availability of necessary pharmaceuticals globally. We believe that even if the world were to reform the patent system there would have to be a globally supported subsidy for the release of the intellectual property produced by individual pharmaceutical companies.
On the flipside of intellectual property is fake reproductions—counterfeits. Counterfeit drug production is one of the larger problems facing world health, often more dangerous than the ailments these drugs purport to cure. To announce a war on counterfeit drug production would be a useless effort and that legislation too would be deemed a waste of words. We believe that one solution for identifying counterfeit drugs would be by producing a mark that cannot be imitated by anything other than the companies that produce them, similar to the production of American paper money. However, regardless of the manner in which the World Health Organization plans to disarm the counterfeit trade globally, the ultimate method for stopping it is tackling poverty and increasing availability to those who simply cannot afford drugs.
Some people around the world, regardless of the country they live in, have absolutely no access to health care due to poverty. If we lived in a perfect world, which Jamaica plans to create alongside other UN member nations there would be a mandated global health care system that provides aid to those who need it most. By creating a global health care system, funded by through .5% contribution through taxed money by all countries in the United Nations, nations like Jamaica and other poverty stricken regions around the world would become benefactors to the health care system. Through slashing disease rates globally, WHO would also see an exponential increase in the prevention of epidemics and pandemics, thereby reducing the need for refugee placement. In it’s simplest form, through a global health care system, we’d be attacking disease at it’s source.
