Health Impact Fund aims to save lives

August 26, 2008

By Grady Semmens

In the big-business world of pharmaceutical research and development, there is a growing gap between the creation of new life-saving drugs and getting those products to billions of people around the world that need them most but are unable to afford them.

Striking a balance between corporate profits and improving the health of the world’s poor is the goal of a new plan drafted by a group of leading international health care and economics researchers, including University of Calgary economist Aidan Hollis.

Called the Health Impact Fund, the plan aims to stimulate R&D into important drugs while also ensuring the end products remain affordable on a global scale.

“Affordability of drugs is becoming an issue everywhere,” says Hollis, an associate professor and fellow of the Institute for Advanced Policy Research. “What we’re trying to do with the Health Impact Fund is provide a system that is beneficial to everyone.”

In a new book launched in Oslo, Norway on Monday, Hollis and colleagues Thomas Pogge (Yale) and Peter Singer (Princeton) present the plan that calls for a fund to be established that offers pharmaceutical innovators a cash reward in return for selling their products at cost. The fund, which is to be financed mainly by governments, will reward companies involved depending on how widespread their drugs are used around the world.

“We’re not asking for corporations to give their products away,” Hollis explains. “If it is used correctly, the fund would reward those drugs that have the most impact on the world and companies should earn the same amount of money as they would if they didn’t take part.”

More information about the Health Impact Fund is available online at: www.healthimpactfund.org