Lives Not Profits leaflet

Type: Leaflets
Date: 2 June 2023
Campaigns: Pharma

Why we need a new pharma system

Big pharma corporations make huge profits from life-saving medication, even though the research behind these drugs is often funded with public money. Increasingly, the big pharma model is to buy up, privatise and monopolise the scientific advances of others. By putting patents on these drugs, they ensure they have total control over pricing and access.

Pharma corporations ignore many of the illnesses that hit hardest in the global south, because drugs for these diseases are simply less profitable. From TB to dengue fever, huge numbers of deadly pathogens receive very little investment.

And big pharma companies often charge so much for essential medicines, including for cancer drugs, that many countries around the world simply can’t afford them. Even the NHS sometimes has to ration access to certain drugs.

This fold-out leaflet includes demands for a new pharma system and a world map highlighting hopeful alternatives.

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