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UN launched a programme to help developing countries acquire essential drugs at fair prices.

UN Move On Drugs Laudable

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has just launched a programme to help developing countries acquire essential drugs at fair prices.

The programme will use its purchasing power to leverage price reductions for quality drugs and diagnostic kits.

The launch of the UN facility coincides with a survey which shows that Kenyans are paying 18 times more than the average world prices for drugs to treat diseases such as malaria. This means that about 18 million people in the country lack access to essential medicine.

The report demonstrates that the prices of generic drugs in Kenya are four times higher than the world average.

There can be no reason, besides heartless profiteering, why citizens of needy countries such as Kenya, Mali, Tanzania and Haiti should pay more for medicine than citizens of Britain, Japan and the US.

It is probable that multinational pharmaceutical companies and their local agents are conspiring to make abnormal profits from poor people, while ensuring their own wealthy citizens do not die for lack of medicine.

It is easy, of course, to argue, that it is all about free markets and the independence by drug manufacturers to set their own prices. Transport and warehousing costs, as well as the smaller volumes demanded, might also make drugs more expensive in developing countries.

But that still cannot explain the massive difference in prices between Nairobi and New York.

Drugs are essentials whose availability, especially for those in dire straits, cannot be left to the inherent unfairness of mercantilism. There is an urgent need for interventions to ensure they are available to all in need.

Individual governments, obviously, may not be able to do very much, which is where the United Nations comes in.

The beauty of the new programme is that it is does not intend to enforce arbitrary price controls across the globe. Such an attempt would obviously be unworkable.

But by intervening directly in the market as a purchaser, the UN programme will be able to have great sway on prices. If it works, it might mean the end of unjust and exploitative pricing structures that condemn the most needy to death for lack of medicine.