Mbolonzi’s story: Access to insulin in Kenya

Mbolonzi from Kenya (living with type 1 diabetes) My name is Mbolonzi. I live in Kenya and I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in July 2013 when I was 29 years old. I lost a lot of weight, my skin had become so dry, and I drank much water – maybe up to 5 litres...

Gwebani’s story: drug-resistant TB in South Africa

23 year old Nikiwe Gwebani is a Multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB patient living in Khayelitsha one of the biggest townships in Cape Town, South Africa. She was Diagnosed with MDR TB on the 14th of December 2015 after showing some signs of TB in October which included...

MYTH 1

MYTH 1: It costs $1 billion to produce a drug because of the cost of clinical trials, and accounting for all the R&D of other medical experiments that didn’t prove successful. BUSTED! Even the big pharma boss of GSK has admitted this is “the industry’s biggest...

MYTH 2

MYTH 2: We charge high prices so we have money to reinvest into new drugs. BUSTED! The majority of financial return on medicines isn’t even spent on R&D. Big pharma (obviously) aren’t keen on being transparent about this issue but as you can see from the table...

MYTH 3

MYTH 3: Private investment funds medical R&D so we need to charge high prices to be accountable to these investors. BUSTED! Who pays for drug R&D? We do. A study from the Global Forum for Health Research showed that 43% of investment is fronted by public...