Quantcast
Channel: News – Southern African Regional Programme on Access to Medicines
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 5

SARPAM featured by Tim Berners Lee – Inventor of the World Wide Web

0
0

In an article discussing the need and value of raw data featured in Wired magazine, he had this to say about SARPAM:

Take the example of the UK aid funded Southern Africa Regional Programme on Access to Medicines and Diagnostics (SARPAM). This is an organisation that painstakingly worked with insiders in health ministries and local health professionals to collect and publish public data on the price and availability of medicines. They revealed that some governments were being charged enormously higher rates — up to 25 times more — for the same medicines. The findings enabled governments to put pressure on pharmaceutical companies to reduce the prices.

Imagine how quickly impacts such as these would multiply if governments were to openly publish this data, not just about the cost of medicine, but also about student attendance rates or crop productivity compared to use of pesticides. Scientific data could help researchers to find new drugs, given genomics and the biology of individuals, and the massive amount of data needed to understand and combat climate change would be available to all who work on it.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 5

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images