Student-led Conference Energizes International Movement for Greater Access to Medicines

UAEM conference

Public Policy and Global Health faculty member Dr. Anthony So is faculty advisor for the UAEM program.

Published October 12, 2010, last updated on June 3, 2020 under Education News

Undergraduate and graduate students from more than 43 institutions and seven countries, including Canada, Tanzania, Brazil, Uganda and Australia, and the US, convened in the Triangle on October 9-10 for the annual international conference of the grassroots student movement, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM)

The conference was jointly hosted by the local UAEM chapters at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill.  UAEM promotes socially-responsible licensing policies at universities to increase access to medicines in developing countries, advocates for greater research in neglected diseases, and is working to increase the transparency of university technology transfer. 

Over the duration of the conference, participants heard from a number of speakers on topics related to global access to drugs and the promotion of licensing and research on neglected diseases. Following opening remarks from DGHI Founding Director Michael Merson, the conference got under way with Matthew Spitzer, president of the US Board of Directors of Doctors Without Borders/MSF, and Emi Maclean, director of the Access to Essential Medicines Campaign, who put a human face on the issues when they discussed MSF’s struggles in overcoming intellectual property barriers to better serve the poor in developing countries. 

The keynote speaker, Daniel Ravicher, gave an energizing talk on how patenting human genes can inhibit progress, research and patient care.  On behalf of numerous patients and physicians, and in collaboration with the ACLU, Ravicher successfully challenged Myriad Genetics on the patents on two genes implicated in breast cancer. 

 Other speakers included Suerie Moon, advisor to UNITAID, who discussed a recent international strategy – a medicines patent pool – to attempt to allow generic access to new HIV medicines in certain regions.  Bhaven Sampat, professor of health policy at Columbia University, and Arti Rai, professor of law at Duke, discussed the importance of universities in drug discoveries and the legal mechanisms that make universities important players in determining the accessibility of their innovations for both research and humanitarian purposes. 

Additionally, students from around the world shared their successes in campaigning for socially-responsible licensing policies at their universities.  Chris Manz, third-year medical student at Duke and chair of AMSA’s Pharm Free Campaign, reflected on a recent campaign against a provision in the health care reform bill that will keep the cost of biologic drugs high and out of reach for poorer patients in the United States – a campaign that, while ultimately unsuccessful, showed the impact students can have, with over 9,000 calls and letters to Congress and numerous editorials in top newspapers around the country, including the New York Times. 

Students left the conference with new ideas and networks and are energized to work with their universities to make global public interest the top priority, to make university research and innovation available in both Durban and Durham.

UAEM is grateful for the support of the Sanford School of Public Policy’s Program on Global Health and Technology Access and the Duke Global Health Institute.

The grassroots movement is expanding at Duke, and new students are always welcome.  Contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for more info. 

Compiled by Richard Waters, 4th year Duke medical student

The UAEM Conference attracted participants from more than 40 institutions in 7 countries