NHS Price Problem Is Big Pharma, Not Striking Nurses
Imagine a disability almost disappearing if you flew out of the Global South. I have severe haemophilia, a genetic condition that interferes with the body’s ability to clot after bleeding. When left untreated, anything — even a bruise or merely sitting down — can trigger a bleed, internally or externally. Anti-clotting injections can stop this.
However, outside the advanced West, these injections are sold at exorbitantly high prices. When I was a child in India, my parents couldn’t afford such treatment, so they’d bury my bleeding joints under piles of ice to freeze them. Almost all the bleeds I experienced in India were left untreated, resulting in permanent damage to my joints and internal organs. In the U.K., the NHS home-delivers me these injections twice a month.
This global medical apartheid is created and perpetuated by pharmaceutical monopolies.