By Jeff Dominguez

There are immense gaps between rich and poor countries when it comes to public health goods.

The burden of illness is unevenly experienced throughout the world, where men, women, and children can suffer immensely and even die in search of treatment. Some travel eight hours and camp outside facilities in attempt to receive minimal (and perhaps the only) available treatment for an advanced cancer, while others drive ten minutes to a local hospital to obtain care for the same condition.

Health deprivation as a cause of inequality is disregarded when certain groups of people do not have access, or the means, to obtain medicinal goods. However, this isn’t news to anyone. It’s culturally accepted that people like Magic Johnson can find treatment for HIV, while poorer populations are often doomed to simply pass away.

Good health is being treated as an afforded privilege. Since we can afford the best cancer treatment, should that treatment only stay here in the United States? If other nations were as rich as us, would people cease to experience delayed, limited or no treatment for diseases that affect their lives?

The World Health Organization (WHO), as well as numerous international constitutions, has adopted the right to health as a fundamental right of every human being, not just a privilege for a select group of individuals.

Needless to say, a new form of classism has cultivated. As the pharmaceutical industry seems to continually favor the needs of more developed countries, studies have demonstrated that research and innovation of medicines for many of the tropical diseases (prominent in less developed regions) are being neglected.

The aim of major pharmaceutical research, then, is not centered on improving lives – it is more concerned with increasing profits than alleviating the suffering of those who are in dire need of medical advancements.

For instance, developing antidepressants for patients with long-term diagnosis in the western hemisphere produces far greater returns for a company than a vaccination for a third world disease with an impoverished population.

Patents are awarded to the companies that produce new medicines. This grants them a limited monopoly of 20 years where others are legally banned from producing and selling the same drug.

Ultimately, this enables companies to demand high prices (being the only endorsed entity to set the price) for that specific medicine, with extremely limited opportunity for the production of a generic, more accessible form for the poor.

This would mean that the poor are not only faced with the issue of affordability but of availability of medicines and services as well.
A broken system is fashioned, where the odds are rarely ever in the favor of those who need it most.

Thus, regions with higher levels of poverty, ineffective disease prevention and diminished physical resources often perpetuate health inequality.

Impoverished individuals lack accessibility to effective and affordable drugs and medicinal services. Since drug companies have a crucial influence in health care, they must recognize their responsibility to balance a desire for profit with their obligation to provide vital services for all people, not just those who were born into privilege.

Jeff Dominguez studies biology. He can be reached at dcoffey@unr.edu.