About Open Society & Access to Medicines
Despite advances in medical science, affordable safe and effective medicines remain inaccessible in many developing countries. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 30 percent of the world’s population—1.3 to 2.1 billion people—lack access to essential medicines
To address this gap, the Open Society Public Health Program established the Access to Essential Medicines Initiative in 2007. The Initiative works to promote increased access to essential medicines in developing countries and countries in post-socialist transition, especially for poor and marginalized populations for whom this access is likely to be elusive.
The Initiative is guided by two main principles:
- Essential medicines are social goods, and it is a public responsibility to ensure their development, availability, and accessibility for those who need them.
- Greater transparency and accountability in policies and practices are necessary to ensure the development, availability, and accessibility of essential medicines.
The Access to Essential Medicines Initiative aims to empower civil society through capacity building, grantmaking for advocacy work, and fostering of leadership to achieve the following objectives:
- Make better use of the existing legal and policy frameworks to improve access to essential medicines at the country level.
- Push back on emerging national and international policy and legal frameworks that hamper access to essential medicines, while promoting laws, policies, and practices that protect public health and safeguard access to medicines.
- Foster new thinking and action on needs-driven pharmaceutical innovation, including access, for countries in the global South.
