The Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex has issued a set of guidelines for pharma companies on the access to drugs for sexual health.

The opening paragraph sets the context:

"Almost 2 billion people lack access to essential medicines. This deprivation causes immense and avoidable suffering: ill health, pain, fear, loss of dignity and life. Improving access to existing medicines could save 10 million lives each year, 4 million of them in Africa and South-East Asia. Besides deprivation, gross inequity in access to medicines remains the overriding feature of the world pharmaceutical situation. Average per capita spending on medicines in high income countries is 100 times higher than in low-income countries: about US$400 compared with US$4. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 15 per cent of the world’s population consumes over 90 per cent of the world’s production of pharmaceuticals."

This particular report looks at the access to medicines issue in the context of sexual and reproductive health.

The guidelines cover themes including transparency, management, monitoring and accountability,
pricing and ethical marketing.

NovoNordisk gets several honorable mentions in the report for the extent of its willingness to hold up its practices to scrutiny against the guidelines. No other pharmaceutical firm was similarly inclined.

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