On Wednesday I attended the Washington Post’s event on non-communicable diseases (NCDs), “Sharing the Responsibility.” The event was co-sponsored by Eli Lilly & Co.
(Video clips of this event can be found at www.washingtonpostlive.com)
The title of the conference was crucial as world-class speaker after speaker spoke to the need for cooperation between (as Ann Keeling, the CEO of the International Diabetes Federation and Chair of the NCD Alliance put it) “the three P’s – public, private, and people.”
For a change, the discussion of NCDs wasn’t framed as a battle between “good guys” (generally portrayed in the mainstream media as “civil society”) and “bad guys” (private industry). Rather than being about placing the blame, it was about developing solutions. This position was stated early and eloquently by the event’s opening speaker, Dr. Julio Frank (Dean of the Faculty, Harvard School of Public Health and the key founding father of the Mexican healthcare system). Dr. Frank warned that we must avoid and beware of “reductionist solutions.”
When asked about the role of intellectual property rights and their role in addressing the NCD issue, Dr. Frank said that protecting IPRs is crucial to developing new and innovative global healthcare solutions. While he was answering this question, Ms. Keeling had no comment on the question of IPRs but did comment that, “there are no magic bullets.”
This concept of “shared responsibility” issues many challenges – not the least of which goes out to the “Uncivil Society” movement led by (among others) Jamie Love. Uncivil Society demonizes any role for industry -- except maybe writing checks (which brings to mind Abba Eban’s famous quote about the give-and-take between Israel and the PLO –“We give and they take.”)
As H.L. Mencken famously quipped, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
Uncivil Society was called out at this event. “Shared responsibility,” means they must cease repeating and repeating and repeating their incessant falsehood that the majority of the Developing World’s healthcare problems could be solved if only we would do away with patents and intellectual property protection.
The petty agenda of Uncivil Society must not be allowed to hijack the important global mission of combating NCDs.
During the panel on “Public & Private Partnerships,” Herb Riband (VP, External Affairs for Medtronic) spoke about a “confluence of interests.” And John Lechleiter (President and CEO, Eli Lilly & Co.) commented that, “There is no substitute for the power of partnership.” And Lilly is putting its money where its mouth is. A day before the Post event they announced the Lilly NCD Partnership, a five-year $30 million commitment to fight the rising burden of non-communicable diseases in developing nations. And it’s not about writing a check, but rather combines the company’s resources with the expertise of leading global health organizations, to identify new models of patient care that increase treatment access and improve outcomes for underserved people.
As Mark Kramer (Senior Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School of Business) said, a key role for private industry is to “broker partnerships that propel progress.”
David Brown (a Washington Post journalist and a physician) commented that we must avoid the “false dichotomies” of NCDs (infectious vs. non-infectious, cure vs. prevention, rich vs. poor). So too must we avoid the false dichotomy of “hero vs. villain.”
The Washington Post conference, held in advance of next week’s historic United Nation’s High Level Meeting on NCDs, made it abundantly clear that, to actively, aggressively, and creatively fight NCDs in the Developing World (and, for that matter, the whole world), there must be partnerships rather than partisanship.
The common ground is shared responsibility.
