ABSTRACT
The technological transformation of the 21st century has significantly advanced the frontiers of science in numerous technological fields. Notably, the medical and pharmaceutical sector has witnessed major technological breakthroughs, including the mapping of the human genome, new classes of antibiotics, antiretroviral (ARV) therapy for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, and cutting-edge cancer treatments, among others. Despite these dramatic developments, achieving health objectives in least developed countries remains challenging, as millions of people continue to die from treatable and preventable diseases. While the debate over whether and to what extent intellectual property rights lead to increased innovation and life-saving medical technologies or unfairly restrict access to those technologies has raged for nearly three decades, this book identifies and addresses three blind spots. First is the underexplored but extremely important topic of regional cooperation for pharmaceutical access considering the daunting challenges that manifest when individual least developed countries attempt to drive sustainable access to medicines on their own. Second is the extensive attention in the literature on emerging economies, while least developed countries and their peculiar contexts are manifestly understudied. Third is the emphasis often solely placed on overcoming the intellectual property barriers to pharmaceutical access, ignoring the interrelated non-intellectual property-related barriers. Grounded in qualitative analysis, the crux of the book is straightforward: regionally coordinated strategies to overcome the impediments to the procurement, production, and distribution of essential medicines in least developed countries could in themselves produce an organisational infrastructure able to effectively deal with many operational variables, including pharmaceutical patents, that impact on sustainable pharmaceutical access.
