Access to Essential Medicines as a Human Right: History

As the pharmaceutical industry transitions from discovery and refinement to research and development, the debate over access to essential medicines is fast becoming a proving ground for American institutions, Western values, and individual morality. Globally, there is tension between rich First-World producers and poor Third-World consumers. Combinations of small, nongovernmental human rights organizations, and transnational authorities like the World Health Organization (WHO), have succeeded in checking the absolute number of underserved, even in the midst of significant population gains. Notwithstanding these efforts, presently there are hundreds of thousands of people lacking necessary medications, who are suffering between the competing interests of pharmaceutical consumers and pharmaceutical producers.