Ending an Epidemic: Overcoming the Barriers to an HCV Free Future

Global Health Justice Partnership calls for action to lower drug prices
BY AMAKA UCHEGBU
STAFF REPORTER
Thursday, March 5, 2015

Yale’s Global Health Justice Partnership has released a report warning the international community that scientific discoveries will not be enough to prevent the over 500,000 deaths that occur every year from Hepatitis C.

Last week, in partnership with the AIDS policy think tank Treatment Action Group and the Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge, which aims to increase access to medicines worldwide, the GHJP cautioned that despite the development of Sovaldi — a Hepatitis C drug, marketed since 2013, with a 96 percent efficacy rate in some patients — there are numerous remaining hurdles to ending the “silent epidemic” of Hepatitis C, especially in low- and middle-income countries. In their report, “Ending an Epidemic: Overcoming the Barriers to an HCV Free Future,” the four lead student authors advocated for legal, economic and political solutions to the challenge.

“The bottom line takeaway is that if you make a breakthrough, there is no guarantee that it will get to everyone,” said co-author Kyle Ragins MED ’15 SOM ’15 . “You need innovation in your intellectual property law, your financing and the way care is delivered.”

Continue reading.... 

Report - Ending an Epidemic: Overcoming the Barriers to an HCV Free Future