Affordable medicine plan goes global(nly register their products if they expe...),Health

"The idea is that it's not the responsibility of the drug companies to ensure that everyone has access to these medicines. Charity by for-profit companies is not a sustainable solution," says Hollis. "By reorganizing the way we pay for pharmaceutical innovation, we can achieve wider access without extra costs. Patients win, and pharmaceutical companies also win."

Peter Singer, a bioethics professor at Princeton University and one of many collaborators involved in the project says: "The beauty of the scheme is that it gives economic support to the idea that all human lives are of equal value."

The estimated cost of this fund would be $6-billion annually, paid through a consortium of governments. Patients and insurance companies would then cover only the marginal cost of production and distribution. The key is getting buy-in from a number of governments worldwide.

Hollis admits that the timing is bad to be asking for cash during the current global economic crisis when the attention of the world's governments is focused elsewhere. But that doesn't mean the critical issue of drug accessibility is going away. "The U.S. has nearly 50 million people without health insurance who may not be getting the drugs they need and that's likely to increase with the weaker economy."

Pogge says Barack Obama's recent presidential election win suggests that the U.S. is more likely to be interested in such a proposal, which presents a unique opportunity for the country to regain some of the good will and moral stature it has lost in recent years.

"One very big difference this financial crisis makes is that we have to emphasize that the Health Impact Fund is advantageous for both rich and poor countries. It mustn't be perceived as merely a development-aid project. And I think that's relatively easy to do because in r
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