Oxfam report urges pragmatic drug pricing in emerging economies

A new report by Oxfam, Investing for life: Meeting poor people’s needs for access to medicines through responsible business practices, urges pharmaceutical companies to lower retail prices for drug in emerging economies. At current levels, the drugs are not affordable by 85% of people who could benefit from them, and whose alternative is often death. Also, because they are not affordable unit sales are far lower than they would otherwise be, and there is a strong incentive to produce copies or fakes which damage the pharmaceutical companies’ reputations.

Summary by BBC.