Transparency matters

Why is transparency so important?

For too long, pharmaceutical corporations have been able to charge sky-high prices because they aren’t obliged to reveal their research and development costs; how much tax-payer funding they received to help develop medicines OR what prices they charge others. Governments must take responsibility for ensuring that the prices they pay for medicines and the investments they make in developing them are transparent.

Vivian Peng/MSF

This is a great deal for pharmaceutical corporations, who hold all the cards in medicine pricing negotiations and can set prices as high as they like. Meanwhile people who need these medicines and the healthcare systems upon which they rely too often find medicines priced out of reach.

A resolution passed at the World Health Assembly, the general assembly of the World Health Organization, could change this unfair status quo by levelling the playing field. Pharmaceutical corporations would be obliged to reveal essential information, which would help governments negotiate fairer prices for medicines.

People deserve better.

Governments must put lives over profits and support the Transparency Resolution at the World Health Assembly.