Palau de Cerveró. «Manuela Solís» room

Organized by: Farmacéuticos Mundi

Sponsored by: Generalitat Valenciana

In  collaboration with: Universitat de València and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas

The exhibition is part of an education and awareness campaign entitled Medicamentos esenciales: recetas que salvan vidas (Essential medicines: life-saving prescriptions), and its first aim is drawing attention to the difficulty of millions of people in having access to health care and essential medicines, just by the fact of living in an isolated rural environment or by being a women and also an indigenous. In addition, the lack of R&D in treatments for common diseases in poor countries is denounced and also the effect that copyright laws have on the health of millions of people.

A third of the global population cannot have access to the drugs they need, partly because of the lack of infrastructure and means of transport. Communities with a low population density, which are already isolated, have no possibility of access to the scarce health services that their countries offer. Through the story of María Elena, a 28 year-old woman from Guatemala who has four children, and Kavira, a woman from Siera Leone, married at the age of 15 and pregnant with her fifth child, we could know the condition of these populations to access basic health services.

Interactive gaming and “knots” with solutions

The exhibition also offers visitors a “very enlightening” interactive game where the participants, selecting various parameters such as age, gender, country, education or income, will “live” a reality of access to different drugs according to their choice and will know the possible solutions, as explained by the exhibition curator. This exhibition aims at raising visitors awareness about the importance of guaranteing access to medicines for the survival and development of the most vulnerable populations.

Facts:

• Over 90% of global diseases can be treated with more than 300 drugs, included in the Essential Medicines List established by the World Health Organization.
• In rural areas, access to health services can be 20% lower than in the cities.
• The lack of medicines distribution services and a local industry determine the geographical access to drugs.
• 70% of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day, are women or girls. Health spending is unsustainable, therefore maternal and child mortality increases.
• Many medicines on the market do not have paediatric presentation, thus denying the right to health to children.
• According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 10% of the medicines sold worldwide are counterfeits. In impoverished countries, they represent up to 50% of the medicines sold.
• 8,000 people die every day from “forgotten” diseases, those with easy treatment but which are not profitable for the pharmaceutical industry because they affect the population with fewer resources.