THE MEDICINES SAVE LIVES, BUT ITS HIGH PRICES ARE A #PHARMACEUTICALFENCE

Madrid, 20th of April, 2016: Members of the campaign It’s Not Healthy have gathered today, dressed in a box of medicine at the doors of Congress in order to demand the different political parties to propel measures to end the high price of medicines and to transform the current model of research and development.

A group of medicine boxes, marked “Sobradi”- in allusion to the treatment for Hepatitis C, whose high price has generated controversy in all the world, also in Spain- has traveled around different points of the center of Madrid slowing down the path of people that were walking through the street. A symbolic act in order to report that the same medicines that save lives also may be a barrier because of their high cost. “We cannot continue allowing the prices of medicines to be arbitrary and make up these costs based on what each country is willing to pay. We are talking of the medicines that treat illnesses as serious as cancer, AIDS, the rare illnesses or hepatitis C and they should be considered a well public,” Vanessa Lopez has affirmed, director of Right to Health Foundation. “The truth is that there is not a system of health that is capable of assuming these prices without putting its sustainability at risk, a situation that we are already seeing in Spain,” she added.

In the Congress, the representatives of It’s Not Healthy have handed in a manifest to the political parties undersigned by more than twenty non- governmental organizations (NGOs), professional schools, and scientific- professional associations. The document demands the construction of a system of medical research that is efficient, sustainable, and that guarantees the access to medicines at an affordable price. “As citizens we have a right to know how much we are paying for the medicines or how much public investment allocates itself to research and, to the day of today, it is an information that they refuse us. We need a change in the system and, although some of those reforms will need to be a collaboration and an international compromise, measures exist that should implement themselves in Spain in an immediate way. It worries us that this period of political uncertainty expands its setting in operation,” Irene Bernal, coordinator of policy of the campaign It’s Not Healthy, has said.

It’s Not Healthy has recalled, furthermore, that nowadays one of each three people does not have access to the medicines that he or she needs. “The availability of essential medicines of quality at affordable prices and with adequate standards of quality is a fundamental requirement in order to guarantee the universal access to health. However, in the current situation more than 2,000 million people in the world- principally the groups in most vulnerable situations- do not have access to them and remain excluded of the human right to health. The holders of obligation, responsible for the social and sanitary politics, should assure that the beginnings of equity and social justice come true in the planning of services and resources, without the criterion of the market prevailing,” Ave Maria Aburto, spokesperson for Doctors of the World, has reminded.

The Proposal of It’s Not Healthy
The campaign was born in the context of the past general elections in order to mobilize the political compromise  for a change in the current innovation model of medicines. PSOE, Podemos, Unidad Popular- Izquierda Unida, Democràcia y Llibertat y UPyD signed the declaration of It’s Not Healthy promising to look for a new model that guarantees the access of the citizen to the medicines that he or she needs at an affordable price.  Therefore, the campaign has reminded the political parties in the Congress of their promise and has urged the rest of the parties, among them PP y Ciudadanos, to sign the declaration.

In order that the change of the model produces itself, It’s Not Healthy demands the introduction of transparency in all of the system of research and development of medicines in order to know the real prices of the transaction in the purchase of medicines, the public investments and fiscal incentives in R+D that allocate themselves to the development of the medicines, or the clinical data and results of research and costs of pharmaceutical products produced with public money.

The campaign also demands the introduction of criteria of public interest in all the investments that the state carries out in this field; and the momentum of new innovation models through governments, institutions and research centers that promote initiatives of R+D based on new models of research and development of medicines that do not depend exclusively on the patents as an incentive and model of business.