Médecins Sans Frontières medical teams have long faced challenges in getting effective and affordable treatments for people in our care. In the late 1990s, as frustration mounted over people dying from treatable diseases, MSF began to document the problem, joining with patient groups to speak out forcefully and demand action. 

In 1999, MSF publicly launched the Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, now the Access Campaign, to tackle the policies, and the legal and political barriers, that prevent people from accessing treatment in the communities where we work and beyond. That same year, MSF was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and put the funds towards improving treatments and boosting research for neglected diseases, merging with the Campaign’s work. 

At the time, the HIV/AIDS epidemic was still raging across the world. While lifesaving antiretroviral medicines had transformed HIV into a manageable chronic condition in wealthy countries, treatment was priced out of reach for almost everyone else. In addition, treatments for neglected diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and sleeping sickness were often ineffective, toxic, ill-adapted for use in the places we work, or simply did not exist at all. 

For 20 years, MSF has worked with civil society to ensure that pharmaceutical corporations, governments and others prioritise people’s lives and health over patents and profits. The access to medicines movement overcame patent monopolies to make way for generic production and competition of antiretrovirals, and prices dropped 99 per cent over 10 years. This and other achievements of the Campaign, including for hepatitis C, malaria, pneumonia, sleeping sickness and TB, are highlighted below. 

But many new drugs, diagnostics and vaccines are being sold at increasingly high prices, and monopolies are becoming more entrenched. We are still missing the tools we need to control rising antimicrobial resistance and outbreaks of epidemic diseases such as Ebola and COVID-19. MSF, through the Access Campaign, continues to advocate the transformation of the medical innovation ecosystem to better address the health needs of people in our care. For example, given that medical research and development is heavily financed by governments, MSF is calling for increased transparency in drug development and production costs, and a larger role for the public in making sure that medicines are made affordable and accessible. 

The crisis of access to medicines and innovation is no longer affecting only low- and middle-income countries; it is now truly global. Our slogan, Medicines Shouldn’t Be a Luxury, is still valid; together we must drastically step up efforts to expand people’s access to lifesaving health tools.