By Merith Basey | Executive Director, UAEM North America
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
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