The UBC Graduate School of Journalism has partnered with the CIHR New Emerging Team for Rare Diseases to develop this intense look at rare diseases and the issue of access to medicines.
They state that one in 12 Canadians suffers from a rare disease, which means that rare diseases as a group are in fact, pretty common. This complicates the issue of pharmaceutical companies researching and developing treatments for these usually genetic diseases, even though most of them are life-threatening. And even if they do, who pays for the treatment when they initially release the medicines at a very high overhead?
The project highlights several short videos exploring the issues for families, pharmaceutical industry, policy advocates and explores the kinds of political tradeoffs that occur when making health care decisions.
It’s an excellent presentation and is available at: http://www.milliondollarmeds.com/
Here’s the trailer.
Million Dollar Meds Trailer from The Global Reporting Centre on Vimeo.