Critics blast ‘inward, technocratic’ MSF leadership for closing Access Campaign

The decision has been described as a triumph for technocrats within MSF, who want the organisation to be more narrowly focused on humanitarian efforts and less on the wider political issues hampering patients’ access to medicines.

Over 100 civil society organisations and 250 individuals have signed a letter addressed to MSF’s leadership and board, urging them to reverse the decision to close the iconic unit, which they say will “cause catastrophic and irreparable damage to access to health technologies for communities served by MSF projects and beyond”.

Signatories include past MSF leaders Dr Unni Karunakara (former international president), Kris Torgeson (former international secretary general), Gorik Ooms (former general director) and Dr Tido von Schoen-Angerer (former executive director of the Access Campaign).

Dr Mariângela Simão, former World Health Organization (WHO) Assistant Director-General for Access to Medicines and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark also joined civil society organisations and health experts in their appeal to MSF.

“The planned dismantling of the Access Campaign’s core structure, capacities, expertise, and networks will reverberate across the access to medicines movement and beyond,” they write.

“It will be yet another setback to the already-shrinking patient activist and civil society space critical to holding pharmaceutical companies and governments accountable so that medicines are never a luxury.”

Read the full story at Health Policy Watch.

Source: Health Policy Watch