Access to Science, Medicine, and Health
The OneWorld Health Access Program provides treatment to the poorest and sickest children at a cost they can afford. In Bihar, India, where kala-azar is endemic, the Access Program began by conducting research to define the barriers to access and how they can be overcome.
Connect Facebook Twitter Linked InInnovative Solutions to Make Global Health a Reality
Flexible solutions, cutting-edge science, and a new way of thinking about how we can treat the world's poorest, sickest children are bringing the life-saving power of modern medicine to the developing world. At OneWorld Health we find new uses for orphan drugs. We partner with the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies to discover new drug candidates in their compound libraries. We work with biotech start ups to apply the techniques of synthetic biology to create new sources of anti-malarial drugs. We're collaborating with researchers around the world in an open source model of drug development to make and develop and make safe affordable vaccines.
The field of public health today is marked by a renewed sense of optimism and determination. The past several years have seen the creation of unprecedented coalitions of individuals and institutions devoted to global health. Nonprofit organizations, large philanthropic foundations, pharmaceutical companies, public-private partnerships (PPPs), governmental health agencies, and volunteer charities, among others, are working to bring the benefits of an ongoing revolution in medical science to the people who most need them. Organizations such as the World Health Organization, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and UNICEF have been joined by many other innovative groups, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carter Center, Rotary International, the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), the Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) and the Institute for OneWorld Health.
The quest to give the poorest children on the planet a fair chance at a healthy life is enormously complex. The work requires the cooperation of microbiologists and pharmaceutical scientists to statisticians and community activists, from epidemiologists tracking the footprints of a new disease to barefoot volunteers bringing vaccines into remote rainforests.
Some of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies have begun to contribute drugs, in some cases free of charge, to help wipe out diseases that plague the developing world. Meanwhile, individual pharmaceutical scientists, deeply concerned about health inequities and frustrated by an inability to directly contribute, are discovering innovative ways that they can contribute their own time and unique expertise—joining a growing movement of scientists committed to global public health.
Today, in large and small ways, with contributions of time, money, and expertise, a growing community of people from all walks of life––from grassroots volunteers to government health ministers, from barefoot doctors in rural clinics to pharmaceutical scientists in state-of-the-art research facilities—are helping OneWorld Health find the innovative solutions we need to make global health a reality.