Without significantly lowering the price of life-saving AIDS treatment, there could be no hope of testing and treating millions of AIDS patients in low- and middle-income countries.
That’s according to DGHI member Anthony So, as he spoke before a packed audience at the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society’s 41st Annual Scientific Research Symposium on Friday. So, professor of the practice in public policy, spoke of the struggle to bring the price of AIDS treatment from over $10,000 a year to less than $100.
In his keynote address entitled “Lowering the Price of Hope for Global Health,” So spoke of his personal journey as a Rockefeller Foundation officer visiting a township outside of Cape Town to today, in which he directs Sanford School’s Program on Global Health and Technology Access (GHTA).
He recounted how AIDS played a transformative role in the rethinking of not only access to health technologies, but also their innovation. From neglected tropical diseases to novel antibiotics, he showed where the research and development pipeline has faltered and fallen short.
Drawing from the policy work of GHTA, So described strategic approaches for push and pull financing, tiered access, and the pooling of building blocks of knowledge to boost innovation and access to health technologies.
He also challenged the physicians-in-training at the event to join the ranks to help shape research that builds the capacity for local innovation in low- and middle-income countries. He also suggested they find opportunities to publish in open access journals and seek humanitarian access licensing of their inventions.
So is also faculty advisor to the Universities Allied for Essential Medicines program. The 2010 Universities Allied for Essential Medicines Conference, to be co-hosted by Duke and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will take place October 8-10th.
