Oxfam said the $700-billion-a-year industry had made "halting progress" in improving access to medicines in the past five years but big drug companies still saw the issue merely as a reputational problem, not a structural one.
LONDON (Reuters) - The pharmaceutical industry is damaging its own business prospects in emerging markets by not doing more to get vital drugs to millions of people in poor countries, international charity Oxfam said on Tuesday.
Oxfam said the $700-billion-a-year industry had made "halting progress" in improving access to medicines in the past five years but big drug companies still saw the issue merely as a reputational problem, not a structural one.
As result, firms were missing out on the long-term potential of the developing world, according to a report from the Oxford-based organization.
"The industry is operating in a short-sighted way because it could gain enormous benefits from emerging markets, including lower research and development costs and cheaper manufacturing," said Oxfam's Head of Research Sumi Dhanarajan.
!ADVERTISEMENT!"Yet instead it continues to blindly use its same strategies in poor countries. Even today, the richest 15 percent of the world consumes over 90 percent of its pharmaceuticals. At this rate, both the industry and millions of sick patients are losing out."
Drugmakers themselves say they are doing more than ever to help the world's poor with a raft of initiatives designed to get healthcare to millions who cannot afford to pay Western prices.
Between 2000 and 2006, companies collectively made available more than 1.3 billion health interventions -- mostly donations of drugs, vaccines and diagnostics -- worth $6.7 billion, according to the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations.
Oxfam acknowledged manufacturers were offering some free drugs and making others available at discounted prices but said this supply was still extremely limited and mainly restricted to high-profile diseases like HIV/AIDS.
Drug companies should implement systematic and transparent tiered pricing, drop their inflexible attitude to patent protection and commit to more research into diseases that predominantly affect poor people, it concluded.
(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by David Cowell)
