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Dear UAEMers near and far!
Another school year is about to start and the next newsletter’s out! We are always happy about your input, articles, comments, thoughts… Feel free to contact us!
Enjoy Reading!
The Newsletter team – Andia, Chris, Irene and Yu Ri
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Upcoming events
Take the opportunity to be part of these UAEM events coming soon! Send an email to the Empowerment WG!
- WTO forum: Geneva, Switzerland, 1st October 2014
- Informal Forum for international student organizations (IFISO) Serbia, October
- Pre-World Health Summit: Berlin, Germany, 17th -22nd October 2014
- ICHAMS: Dublin, Ireland, October 24th -25th 2014
- US fall conference: Duke, North Carolina, USA, November 7th-9th
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As summer passes, the Sustainable Structure Working Group has prepared a very special questionnaire for you!
As you might remember, the SSWG was established at the last General Assembly in April in Basel. Its purpose is to examine and evaluate current structures of UAEM Europe and to suggest a draft for a new and improved one at the next GA in London.
After a lot of brainstorming we have finalized three questions that every UAEMer can answer if she or he likes. Please do not hesitate, there are no wrong answers! We are really dependent on your opinions and thoughts since this is the only effective way for UAEM to adapt a structure that truly and fully benefits the needs of the organization and its members!
Another possibility to share your thoughts with us is to attend our open Skype call on September 30th! Every UAEM member, experienced or new, is very welcome to join!
Deadline for the questionnaire is October 1st 2014!
Thank you so much!
- SSWG
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Dear global UAEMers,
Five years ago, it seemed to be a big and unrealistic dream: this idea of UAEM as a truly global initiative, with a body, where the different continents could work together on access to medicines worldwide. Many people have been working hard on the plan to make this idea become true, above all as UAEM grew tremendously in the last years. We are so happy that 4 months ago at the European conference (ironically in a childrens hospital) this new body, called the pilot Global Govenance Gouncil (pGGC) was born!
Still in its first steps, we want to take this opportunity to introduce the new pGGC to you.
By the time of the Winter Leadership Meeting 2016, the pGGC is expected to:
- Recommend measures that will increase UAEM's institutional coherence and efficacy internationally.
- Develop a proposed forum for conflict resolution within UAEM.
- Make recommendations regarding longer-term international governance structures that UAEM may wish to adopt.
In discussions with the North American and European board, we felt it would make sense to create a pilot GGC first, to have a period to test the new structure by doing. This can also allow a time to see how to best function as a truly cohesive, global organization.
The pGGC will both discuss how a (full) GGC could best work and test out its potential role. In the past months, the pGGC members have discussed our role, tasks and goals, and we have prioritized a selection of policy/content and more structural issues, and we have agreed upon a two-year workplan to address the following:
We hope to be able to deliver on the tasks we have set out, but your input is crucial. As we move forward, we will seek input from the UAEM network (boards, cc’s, experts… and you!) on the different tasks. We hope you will contact us when you get ideas or experience problems where we might be able to help out - in this way can we test the potential of the pGGC.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have questions (until August 31st: krionarheim@gmail.com, from September 1st; chhetripratik@gmail.com )
Best wishes,
Diane, Ethan, Julia, Prasanta, Pratik, Walter, Lukas, Bryan (and incoming North American ED), Rachel and Kristine,
Pilot Global Governance Council 2014-2016
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Between the 8th and the 12th of September 2014 the UAEM Training Camp took place in Berlin. 16 highly motivated participants from all over Europe worked on improving their skills and learned new tricks about effective campaigning. The camp started from clarifying the focal points of planning the campaigning strategy. Mariken Gaanderse, a trainer and consultant, taught the participants how to select and prioritize the tasks involved in the organization of campaigns.
Later, the participants got to know the political campaigning tactics to win attention of the lay public by surprising it with flash mobs, street theatre plays or fake identities (check out Peng! Collective pretending to be representatives of Google at the re:publica 2014 conference here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QesYSCMCBU0). In further workshops the participants were trained on public speaking, effective lobbying strategies and developing constructive arguments. The program also included an intense panel discussion with the representatives of Peng! Collective, DNDi and MSF, that took place in a very cozy setup thanks to the Charité Medical University. All the events have successfully stimulated personal development and work efficiency of the participants.
To find out more details and see the pictures taken during the camp visit the live blog. We are looking forward to the next one!
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The UAEM WHO WG: high-level advocacy opportunity
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 For the last couple of years UAEM has sent a delegation to the World Health Assembly- the most important health conference of the year, and the decision-making body of the World Health Organization.
During this year's Assembly the delegation was hard at work, trying to push UAEMs' agenda in all relevant forums; lobbying country delegates and other important actors influencing the global health agenda. However, we have learned that most of the decisions are made before the conference itself, and this means that we need to work towards these actors all year, and not just around the time of the WHA.
As of this year, UAEM is also working towards becoming a recognized NGO within the WHO/UN network to create a more sustainable relationship and thus stronger platforms for influencing the decision-making.
To coordinate our efforts and to be able to follow up on the great work the WHA delegations and the WHO working group have done during the last years I would like to invite you to join the WHO working groups next skype call. An important agenda point for the call will be to make a structured plan for our work ahead.
Please fill out the doodle (deadline 19.09.14). Feel free to contact me with any questions you might have!
Best wishes,
WHA delegation leader 2014- Elin Hoffmann Dahl, UAEM Norway.
Contact info: elinhd@gmail.com
Skype name: elinhd
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UAEM @ the 60th IPSF WORLD CONGRESS
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This summer, the IPSF (International Pharmaceutical Students Association) congress took place in Porto, Portugal. This is a yearly conference visited by approx. 700 pharmacy students from all over the world. This year - for the first time - UAEM was represented.
We had the opportunity to do a FITB film-screening as well as to give a workshop. A very fruitful combination – by showing FITB before the workshop, you already have the attention before even starting the workshop. Even more, not only the people attending, but also the movie gets me angry and even more motivated to tell the world in what kind of failing drug development system we live...
For the workshop we chose to do a role play. See here the content of the workshop. In short, we made up case in which a medicine for Tuberculosis C was developed at UCL and (exclusively) licensed to Roche, resulting in an extremely overpriced drug which had been patented in all key production countries and therefore inaccessible for the countries which needed the drug the most.The aim of the workshop was to make them feel what role universities can play and how such a complicated situation could have been prevented when the substance had been licensed under SRL. .
What did we achieve?
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Many interested pharmaceutical students!
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Everyone who attended the workshop signed up for a follow up on UAEM.
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The University of Porto has started a UAEM chapter..
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An invitation for next year’s conference
Merel Philippart
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A New Working Group on Free Trade Agreements
Facilitated by UAEMer, and IFMSA aficionado Anya Gopfert
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 Trade4health is a group which has been slowly gathering members from UAEM, the International Federation of Medical Students and other organisations over the last 18 months.
We are dedicated to understanding the impact of trade agreements on health, most notably the on-going negotiations on the Transpacific partnership (TPP between the United States and 11 other countries), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP between the European Union and the United States) and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA between Canada and the European Union).
Thus far we have been largely working to educate ourselves and our peers of the potential damaging impacts of these trade agreements on health. Our activities have included attending the 'stakeholder negotiations' which are open sessions during the negotiation rounds of the trade agreements, writing articles for student publications and also the Lancet Global Health Blog, engaging in the relevant debates at the World Health Assembly and multiple peer education sessions. We are now looking to expand our work into further advocacy and data gathering in order to expand our reach and our expertise and to ensure that we're working strategically.
The field is vast and complex and so we are looking for new members; those who want to actively speak out in protection of health, or those who wish to educate themselves and others. We'd love to hear from you, do get in touch on thinkglobal@ifmsa.org or anyagopfert@gmail.com and you can join the mailing list by sending a blank email to trade4health+subscribe@googlegroups.com
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UAEM @ the World Health Summit
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Universities Allied for Essential Medicine (UAEM) invites you to the World Health Summit satellite panel discussion:
Transforming Medical Research
Academia's Role in Catalysing an Adequate Medical R&D System
Sunday 19 October from 2pm – 4pm at the Foreign Affairs Building, Berlin
The world is facing an ever more troubling medical access and innovation crisis. Millions of patients worldwide do not have access to existing lifesaving treatments due to affordability problems, and millions do not receive adequate treatment because their conditions are systematically neglected under the current innovation ecosystem.
The WHO's consultative expert working group (CEWG) on research and development (R&D), financing, and development has developed extensive recommendations on how to tackle this crisis. The discussion was taken up favourably by member states at last year's and this year's World Health Assembly.
There is a growing consensus that any solution to the access and innovation crisis will be based on the principle of de-linkage. This concept refers to financing mechanisms that untie the costs of R&D from the cost of the medical end product.
So far, academia has been slow in taking up these major developments in the political sphere, and in grasping the potential benefits that these might entail for public research institutions. We would like to foster the discussion between different stakeholders on the potential benefits of a de-linked medical R&D system.
Refreshments will be provided after the panel discussion.
Find more information on how you can register here
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So here we present another bite of the Basel 2014 Workshops: 'On the Road to an equitable R&D paradigm' by Dr. Zafar Mirza from the WHO.
Dr. Zafar Mirza is a medical doctor who holds a degree in psychiatry and has practised for three years. Certain issues inspired him to become a publicly oriented person with a focus on pharmaceutical policy, with a post-doctoral degree in public health. His aim is to fix issues with respect to pharmaceuticals from outside of the government. He is currently working at the WHO Department of Public Health Innovation and Intellectual Property, a subdivision of the Department of Essential Medicines and Health Product Department. The latter has three pillars, namely innovation, access, regulation.
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