The Challenges of Improving Medicinal Access to Third World Nations

According to the World Health Organization, more than 2 billion lack access to basic medicines, a majority of them being from Africa and Asia. Over the past three decades, we have noticed some progress due to the increased focus on diseases such as AIDS, HIV, polio and malaria – but there is still so much that remains to be done in order to ensure that everyone around the globe has access to proper medical treatment.

The need to spread medicine to a large geographical scale has always been a complex issue with no simple solution. Supply of medicines, health systems, health infrastructure, pricing of products, and logistics each play a crucial role in facilitating access to medicines. Moreover, the only way to improve the pace of its progress is if governments, development organizations, intergovernmental organizations, and pharmaceutical companies were to work together. And more challenges continue to grow every day.

Intellectual Properties

Low-income and less developed countries are being seen as new frontier markets by pharmaceutical companies. However, with many of them clinging onto the rights of their intellectual properties, the production and delivery of various generic drugs in the poorest areas around the world have been making slow progress, becoming a major barrier for many low-income developed countries. Although, there are some pharmaceutical companies that are moving towards licensing as another way to enforce intellectual properties.

The Change in Needs

Tropical diseases that have been neglected remain significant challenges in third-world countries, with more than one billion people dealing with issues that have historically been of less interest to pharmaceutical companies such as leprosy, dengue fever, and many others more. It was in 2012 when renewed attention was brought to these issues with the London Declaration signing on NTDs.

The goal of the signing, which was to eliminate up to 10 NTDs before 2020, was endorsed by several pharmaceutical companies, the World Bank, and various other global health organizations. But once again, despite many people benefiting from donated medicines, there are still many things we need to move forward with in order to meet the 2020 milestone.

And now, we are facing the growing challenge of treating non-communicable diseases, which is creating new needs when it comes to delivering and procuring pharmaceutical products.

Finding A Silver Lining

These are just some of the first few challenges faced by the medical industry. Still, fortunately, there are already a few business leaders who are working towards bringing about a change in these troubling medical circumstances.

Juan De Borbon is a Spanish-American clinical research executive with an extensive background in global clinical R&D. He has conducted more than 2000 clinical trials that were spread to many therapeutic areas, including cardiology, neurology, hepatology, oncology, etc infectious diseases and many more.

Some of his many experiences as an executive include being the CEO and President of the Paradigm Clinical Research Institute, a startup business that is focused on hospital-based phase 1 clinical pharmacology units with additional outpatient clinical sites. Juan de Borbon has also served as the COO and Sr. Vice President of Clinical Services & Support at OmniComm Systems, an Electronic Data Capture software development company.

He also joined American Health in 2021, where he was responsible for leading the organization to the development of smart clinics globally while upgrading the existing health care system within each country to the American Standard.

As someone with deep industry knowledge, Juan de Borbon is one of the very few people who have motivated and inspired the clinical drug development industry for more than 20 years. And as a highly acclaimed executive, he has been recognized by everyone in the industry for his exemplary contributions and leadership in making a significant difference in reforming the medical sector.