Howdy friends - as a 4th year medical student, I am still scratching my head on these questions: Why is it that we have a world of an over-medicated minority and an under-medicated majority?
Why does a disease like HIV/AIDS go largely untreated in the world's poorest countries, decades after effective medicines have been developed to combat this deadly disease?
Access to essential medicines, and the lack thereof, is a critically important and embarrasingly obvious issue that we must address on a global scale.
My role as the PharmFree coordinator for the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) has given me a chance to work with great global health advocates to begin to bring the conversations around essential medicines, international health, and global AIDS into the same circles as conflicts of interest and medical professionalism.
How can we ignore the reality that the same companies that throw thousands of dollars at physicians each year (in lunches, pens, seminars, CMEs, etc.) to bribe them into prescribing that company's erectile dysfunction and sleep-aid drugs are THE SAME companies that often refuse to provide life-saving drugs to the developing world at an affordable price?
How will physicians begin to call for a change in the way that business is done when we are literally and figuratively eating out of the hands of the pharmaceutical giants? (e.g. the more than $40 million year that the American Medical Association makes from selling physician information to drug companies)
We must begin to stand up for global access to needed medicines by saying no to drug companies' gifts and bribes, sending a message that we stand for a more ethical way of developing and dispensing prescriptions drugs to our world's population.
Let us shout and act the mantra:
YES to access to meds,
NO to access to our integrity!
* Sign the AMSA PharmFree pledge today - you do not need to be a pre-med or medical student to do so! http://www.amsa.org/prof/pledge.cfm
In health,
Anthony Fleg
www.pharmfree.org
