Support Student Advocacy for Access to Medicines

At the end of October, with support from donors like you, UAEM was able to welcome over 100 students to our North American fall conference on access to medicines in Atlanta, Georgia. We were able to provide travel support to students who travelled from 20 US States and from as far as India, Brazil, Germany and Canada. 

Humma Sheikh from New York shared,  "As a new member of UAEM, I feel welcomed into a supportive and loving family of people from all around the world who share a mutual passion and diligence to work towards more equitable drug access. I feel more excited and capable than ever to tackle these issues knowing that I have an international network and family to learn from and garner support from. I am so grateful to have had the chance to attend the conference and I am eager to see everyone again!" 

Chloe Hogg, a student leader from Montreal and a member of our North American Coordinating Committee added, "The Emory University conference was for all of us a powerful reminder that access to medicines is not an isolated issue. It is part of the overarching web of systemic social injustice, making our work more connected and important than I had ever realized".

We were also all reminded how far the access to medicines movement needs to come: in Atlanta, Georgia itself the incidence of HIV among young, black gay men is a shocking 12.1%, the highest of any high- income country in the world.

At UAEM, we believe that universities can and must live up to their social missions. They must not allow themselves to fold to the interests of pharmaceutical shareholders - especially when people’s lives are in the balance. We know that health disparities are systematic, avoidable differences that adversely affect socially disadvantaged groups. But we also know that students have power, and at UAEM we believe that together we can work to change the system, starting with universities. 

Thank you so much for your support and please do consider UAEM in your end of year giving -  the work of our amazing student leaders in 2018 is more important than ever. Further, all recurring gifts to this project and our other project on GlobalGiving (also linked below) are currently being matched at 100%.

Best wishes,

Merith

Executive Director, UAEM North America

Links:

• We have a (High Priced!) Drug Problem!

Hi! My name is Carolina Andrada, I’m 21 years old and originally from Argentina. I spent the summer as an intern at Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) North America doing what I love: defending people’s right to access to medicines and healthcare.

Did you know that more than one in three life-saving medicines originates in universities, funded by tax-payers? Our work at UAEM helps to ensure the fruits of this university research and development is affordable and available to the people who need it most.

One of our major projects in the pipeline is our conference coming up in October at Emory University. With your support via Global Giving we have been able to raise much-needed funds to support the travel of new students from Brazil, India, Europe and North America to participate in this access to medicines advocacy training weekend. This way, we will have even more brilliant minds at the table to inspire and work together on university campuses to fight for access to medicine for all.

Throughout the summer, I also helped to organize an event in Washington DC. In a small speech, I expressed how concerning it was to be so young in such a turbulent age, but how invigorating it was to know that nevertheless, I have the ability to create change that matters. It was incredible to witness the sincere care that our friends and peers felt for other people, and it was so empowering to know that they cared about our fight for access to medicines. Your support via GlobalGiving means that we now have more funds to help more students like me with their travel to our next gathering at Emory. We are excited to bring more incredible young activists to our training, to empower them to action at their universities to help ensure new medicines are affordable and available to all not just the privileged few.

My fellow student activists are busy preparing for the conference now, and I am busy preparing for our next big project. Stay tuned to learn more from my other team members around the world about their experiences at the conference and our upcoming global access to medicines week happening on university campuses worldwide!