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World Health Organization
Chad
Access to Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare
When the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) were established, every country
unanimously agreed that not only is world health a right, but also that every country should work to
the best of its ability to ensure the development of health care systems in developing countries, in
which access to essential pharmaceuticals remains a priority. In fact, Goal 8 target 17 of the MDG is
to provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing nations through cooperation with
pharmaceutical companies in donor countries. This issue falls directly under the scope of the World
Health Organization (WHO), whose objective is to ensure that every person in the world receives the
highest level of health and healthcare. Unfortunately, the WHO remains far behind this goal, as less
than half of the world population have been adequately treated (only one in five patients receives the
required medications). One obstacle that the WHO faces is that developing countries have not been
able to purchase many drugs from pharmaceutical countries, which often only produces drugs for
diseases in developed countries (in order to make a higher profit), and the development of a drug
costs about USD $847 million dollars. Another obstacle is that many developing countries do not
have adequate or consistent healthcare facilities or education, so the local pharmaceutical industries
are not self-sufficient to produce drugs without foreign aid or resources (patent laws restrict generic
drug production anyways).
Chad is considered as one of the poorest, unstable, and underdeveloped countries in the
African Union. Therefore, Chad is one of the countries that severely lack access to available
pharmaceuticals and healthcare. Since Chad has been subject to political turmoil for the past fifty
years, healthcare systems have been virtually nonexistent aside from the foreign Non-Governmental
Organizations who have resided in the nation since the first civil war. As such, the pharmaceutical
industries in Chad are nearly useless since Chad has neither the facilities and materials for producing
generic drugs, nor the education to train individuals in the production and application of drugs other
than those who are lucky enough to attend to the University of N'Djamena (less than half of the
Chadian population is literate). Furthermore, most large pharmaceutical companies refuse to pay
attention to the diseases in developing countries such as Chad (knowing that they would make higher
profit by producing medication for diseases in developed countries), so Chad is unable to purchase
many pharmaceutical drugs from abroad. According to statistics, 30% of medications found in
developing nations such as Chad are counterfeit, which not only does nothing to the help of the
Chadian population (some might even contain poison), but also damages the already weak economy
by wasting money on drugs that have proven to be fake. Clearly, Chad is in dire need of greater
access to pharmaceuticals and healthcare.
Chad recognizes that the immediate need of pharmaceuticals and healthcare for developing
countries is very important, and suggests that the United Nations provide incentives to the
pharmaceutical industries. Perhaps the World Trade Organization can grant trade privileges to these
companies if they are able to produce and sell drugs specific to the needs of certain developing
nations at a cheaper price. Ultimately, the final goal would be to establish consistent and active
healthcare systems within the developing countries. It is recommended that the United Nations offer
benefits to developed countries to encourage them to aid the Non-governmental Organizations to aid
a specific group of nations and set up laboratories and training facilities to establish firm
infrastructures of medicine. By centering on the specific group instead of many different nations,
these programs will be able to work on specific medicine that’s needed in the area. Otherwise, the
endeavor would be useless. However, Chad is also a great advocate of national sovereignty, and
must insist that these programs will utilize western medicine along with cultural remedies so that host
nations will not feel that their cultures are impeded upon. This process will undoubtedly take up
much time, but is a necessary step for developing countries to become pharmaceutically selfsufficient, making the vision of the WHO and the MDG ever more imminent.