Speakers
Sibongile Tshabalala,deputy general secretary of theTreatment Action Campaign in South Africa
Morten Thaysen, Global Justice Now

In spite of medical advances, millions of people around the world suffer and die from treatable conditions because they cannot afford to pay for expensive medicine.

Drug companies can charge runaway prices because new drugs are protected by legal monopolies. This model has made the pharmaceutical industry the most profitable in the world.

The companies justify high prices by claiming they need to recoup their research and development costs. But nine of the top ten pharmaceutical companies spend more on marketing than on research and development. And the majority of innovative early-stage research is actually publicly-funded.

We say it’s time to put people before profit in the global drug industry.