Providing affordable medicines
Oxfam believes that medicines and health services should be available to all who need them. Improving the availability and affordability of medicines will save millions of lives. For many poor people one of the main obstacles to good health is the high price of medicines.
Profits Before People
International patent rules give pharmaceutical companies exclusive rights to produce and market their medicines for 20 years without the threat of competition. Oxfam believes that this monopoly protection allows companies to put profits before people. Competition from generic medicines reduces prices and makes vital drugs much more affordable for poor people in developing countries. Patent rules put this competition under threat.
Through our Make Trade Fair campaign Oxfam is campaigning to prevent governments and corporations from forcing developing countries to accept unfair trade rules like this one.
What is Oxfam's campaign trying to achieve?
We are asking big pharmaceutical companies to:
- Invest more in developing drugs that will benefit people living in poverty
- Commit to observe the highest ethical standards in clinical trials, even when local regulation is weak
- Offer lower prices in developing countries in a systematic and transparent way
- Agree to relax patent rules and related intellectual property protection in poor countries
- Stop pushing for even stricter rules and protections in trade agreements with developing countries, so generic manufacturers can produce and market affordable versions of new drugs
What your support can do
80,000 Oxfam supporters voiced their opposition. And it has worked!
Half a million people around the world supported India's right to produce affordable medicines. More than 80,000 Oxfam supporters voiced their opposition by sending emails to the CEO of Novartis. The support and attention raised this from a technical issue, to one of global and moral significance. With this decision to put patients' rights first, India has set the course for other poor countries to stand firm under pressure from multinational drugs companies.
Read more on the Novartis campaign 
More on Access to Medicines 
