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1. WHO Technical Report on Cancer Pricing Misses the Mark—It Should Focus on the “Demand Side”

Author:
Kalipso Chalkidou, Adrian Towse, and Richard Sullivan
Publication Date:
04-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Criticising cancer medicine pricing as too high is what football fans know as an "open goal"—a target that is hard to miss. Yet somehow the World Health Organization (WHO) Technical Report on Cancer Pricing manages to do just that with a paper to the WHO Executive Board calling for price and cost transparency. The assumption goes that transparency will reduce the prices and costs of cancer medicines, a mantra that has united the Trump administration, the US Congress, and the Italian health minister with many NGOs who have called for “greater cost and price transparency”—a sentiment echoed by KEI, which states that “international action is required to improve transparency in reporting the costs of R&D and production, including public sources of funding.”
Topic:
World Health Organization, Health Care Policy, Medicine, Cancer, and Price
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Global Oncology in Rwanda

Author:
Darja Djordjevic
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Last summer, two major pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer and Cipla, reached an agreement to sell sixteen standard chemotherapy drugs at very low cost (purportedly only slightly higher than the manufacturing cost) to six African countries: Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria.1 This negotiated deal also included a plan for top American oncologists to simplify cancer treatment protocols, which an IBM team would then make available through an online, open-access tool. This development signaled an important moment in the politics of global health, one of growing awareness and advocacy around cancer in Africa and the Global South. While this particular deal was a positive and overdue development in the battle long-fought by care providers across the world who look after poor people with cancer, we have to wonder for how long such a deal will last, alongside other pressing concerns. Further, how does this initiative fit into the broader political economy of a profit-driven pharmaceutical industry always in search of new markets, with Africa being a potentially massive one?
Topic:
Public Health, Pandemic, and Cancer
Political Geography:
Global South