It's a public health superhero? Hmmm....

When I think of a person of inspiration my mind immediately jumps to Paul Farmer. The poster-doctor for medical anthropology, Farmer is as close as you can get to an international public health super hero. I could go on about the work he does with his organization, Partners In Health, for pages (it would be especially timely given that they're one of the most respected NGO's working in the Central Plateau of Haiti), but really it's been done and by far better writers.

Plus, I think this space could be much more productively used exploring the mechanics of social entrepreneurship. I'm less interested in listing what people have done and much more concerned with how they're doing it.

I also think it's almost dangerous to focus so much on a particular person's so-called accomplishments. I don't mean to sound flip, its just that tangible changes created in the world are almost never the result of one person's actions. Of course I'm sure the majority of social leaders would readily - and likely happily - agree. But the idea of a "hero" is too mired in the idea of celebrity for my comfort level. (Though I appreciate Evoke drawing on the work of Joseph Campbell.)

So instead of blabbing on about Paul Farmer (though if you'd like to, we certainly can!), I'm going to post a small part of a transcript his partner, Jim Yong Kim, did with Bill Moyers about how they spearheaded a campaign to lower prices of drugs for tuberculosis treatment for developing countries.

It hits on so many of the ideas Evoke is exploring - it's big, it's creative, it's world-changing. What I like about it is that it also details how it was done.

I'd love to hear about how other people are making it happen as well!

(P.S. You can follow the work PIH is doing at their blog at: http://standwithhaiti.org/haiti/news)

BILL MOYERS: One of the big disappointments to a lot of people is that the White House seems to have made a deal, reportedly has made a deal with the
drug industry, not to use the power of the government to negotiate lower
drug prices, or through Medicare and Medicaid. Now I know you know
something about negotiating for lower drug prices, when you were at the
World Health Organization, right?

DR. JIM YONG KIM: Right.

BILL MOYERS: Tell me about that.

DR. JIM YONG KIM: It's a very complicated business. If you look at three diseases, the three major killers, HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, the only disease for
which we have really good drugs is HIV. And it's very simple, because
there's a market in the United States and Europe.


So what we know is that market incentives to drive drug delivery are
critical. We have to maintain them somehow, because if you don't have
market incentives, there are almost no malaria or tuberculosis patients,
we have almost no new drugs. So somehow, we have to maintain the
market incentives, for the pharmaceutical industry to keep working.


Now having said that, I've worked a lot with the drug companies to say,
"Okay, so make as much money as you can on the HIV drugs in the first
world. We will work with you to protect those markets and protect your
intellectual property. On the other hand, in those areas where you make
no money anyway, work with us to make those drugs available." And
they've done that for HIV drugs, in a way that's really quite
astounding.


So somehow-- you know, this is a complicated issue. We've got to make
sure that the incentive for the drug companies to make new drugs is
still there. But at the same time, be reasonable about making sure that
people have access to them.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah, there was a strain of TB, if I--

DR. JIM YONG KIM: Right.

BILL MOYERS: --understand the story, that could be cured by a drug, but the drug was so expensive that poor people couldn't afford it in the developing
world. And what did you do about that?

DR. JIM YONG KIM: What happened was, we looked at the cost of these drugs and the drugs for a complete cure for a patient living in a developing world. When we
started, was about $25,000. But what we later learned was that the only
reason they were so expensive is because they were only sold in
first-world countries.


So what we did was we got everyone who was interested in purchasing
these drugs. We went to Doctors without Borders. We went to other
health organizations and said, "Can you help us get the Indian and
Chinese drug industry to start making these drugs?" And they did it.
Now, the real key was at Eli Lilly and Company, that was making two of
the drugs, they came on board and said, "You know what? We're going to
help you with this program. We don't make any money off these drugs,
they're off patent a long time ago. We're going to actually help you
find manufacturers in those countries that can make these drugs at a
lower cost."


So I think it's one of the greatest acts of corporate philanthropy I've
ever seen, Eli Lilly and Company stepping in on two drugs that they
don't make any money off anymore, helping us to craft the overall
response to drug-resistant tuberculosis. We're not there yet. If there
were a market for tuberculosis drugs, then I think we'd have lots of
new drugs. But because there's not one in the developed world, we're
still struggling.


So those of us who have been really working, you know, on a day-to-day
level to try to provide those drugs, we've learned a couple of things.
One, intellectual property is important-- but the drug companies, if you
keep working with them, they'll see that there is a great philanthropic
and humanitarian achievements that they can claim for themselves, by
helping to make them accessible.
Now we're not there yet. But you know, the Gates Foundation, for
example, is working very hard to fill the h***s that the market is not
filling. You know, we're all-- got our fingers crossed, hoping that
Bill and Melinda Gates will be successful in getting us these new drugs
and vaccines."