Vital drugs are either not authorized or are deemed too expensive, as cases rise.
Rates of tuberculosis are on the rise in Europe, but countries are ill-equipped and lack access to the latest drugs targeting the worst strains.
Some patients are spending a year and a half in hospital isolation receiving old medicines instead of just six months of treatment at home, because countries do not have access to the most up-to-date therapies to cure people of the infectious disease.
In some EU countries, the latest medicines are either not authorized or are deemed too expensive to use. To effectively treat patients, the NGO Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) has stepped in to help in Poland and Slovakia.
Earlier this year, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (EDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that Europe was stalling in its quest to suppress tuberculosis and could miss its 2030 targets to end the disease. The agencies caution that if Europe doesn’t get a grip on the rising rates of infection with the recommended cocktail of drugs, the gains made over the last decade could be lost.
I knew you’d retort with this exact example, because you’re predictable.
No, I actually don’t have the means to save everyone starving in Africa, or even a few. I don’t have supply chain access, influence over foreign governments, or anything to directly aid anyone internationally. So I can give to charities, and do, but government corruption in poor nations ensures that the reach of those donations is limited and the cycle of poverty is ever perpetuated in order to maintain their existing power dynamics.
I also fully support foreign aid and am happy to pay my taxes to contribute to that.
I also am not wealthy. I’m not poor, but I have a hard cap on how much I can give to others before I’m hurting myself and my dependents, and that amount is nothing more than enough to keep a few people limping along for a little longer.
A billion-dollar company can reduce the cost of their absurdly priced medicines that would save millions, and still make insane profits. They just might not maintain perpetual growth.