The Health Impact Fund: Enhancing Justice and Efficiency in Global Health

Thomas Pogge

Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 2012, vol. 13, issue 4, 537-559

Abstract: Some 18 million people die annually from poverty-related causes. Many more are suffering grievously from treatable medical conditions. These burdens can be substantially reduced by supplementing the rules governing pharmaceutical innovation. Established by the World Trade Organization's TRIPS Agreement, these rules cause advanced medicines to be priced beyond the reach of the poor and steer medical research away from diseases concentrated among them. We should complement these rules with the Health Impact Fund (HIF). Financed by many governments, the HIF would offer any new pharmaceutical product the opportunity to participate, during its first 10 years, in the HIF's annual reward pools, receiving a share equal to its share of the assessed health impact of all HIF-registered products. In exchange, the innovator would have to agree to make this product available worldwide at the lowest feasible cost of manufacture. Fully consistent with TRIPS, the HIF achieves three key advances. It directs some pharmaceutical innovation toward the most serious diseases, including those concentrated among the poor. It makes all HIF-registered medicines cheaply available to all. And it incentivizes innovators to promote the optimal use of their HIF-registered medicines. Magnifying one another's effects, these advances would engender large global health gains.

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/19452829.2012.703172 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jhudca:v:13:y:2012:i:4:p:537-559

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CJHD20

DOI: 10.1080/19452829.2012.703172

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Human Development and Capabilities is currently edited by Kathryn Rosenblum

More articles in Journal of Human Development and Capabilities from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().