Topic: Insuring Access to Affordable Pharmaceuticals
Country: Lesotho
Delegate Name: David Borzkowski
School: Kalamazoo Central High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Lesotho position papers GLIMUN 2012 committees
In The Kingdom Lesotho we deal with the high cost of pharmaceutical drugs because of the problems with counterfeit drugs. People will sell drugs that are believed to be the real drug for cheaper and people will take it based on faith that it will help. Lesotho and the WHO also have the problem of not being able to track drugs from the warehouse to the distribution center. By not tracking drugs from checkpoint to checkpoint, there is more chance that the drugs are stolen without anyone knowing until it is too late. Then being sold on the black market. Another reason pharmaceutical drugs are expensive is a basic fact of economics, the supply of drugs is low, and the demand for them is very high.
In Lesotho, the problem of counterfeit drugs is increasing and very dangerous, people are taking drugs they bought off the black market hoping that they are the pills the people told them they are. In order to Identify and trace counterfeit drugs you would need the state and company to coexist with one another. The state would have to track the real drugs more closely, using technology and following it from checkpoint to checkpoint, preventing companies , while the drug company would have to be willing to subject to these checks and not raise the price on their drugs because of the added measures of safety.
We propose in order to make pharmaceutical drugs to be more affordable, companies with patents on the drugs should allow for generic drugs to be made and distributed to underdeveloped countries.
