2017 Annual Report | 25 June, 2018 | Download PDF

Stichting (Foundation) Health Action International (HAI) has never shied away from change. Since its establishment in 1981, paradigms have shifted and new health challenges have emerged and been met with varying degrees of success by the global health community. But HAI has always risen to the challenge, responded flexibly, and intelligently remained at the centre of medicines policy debates, regardless of whether they are country- or disease-specific, or global, regional or national in scope.

Nevertheless, inequities in access to medicines and healthcare continue to thwart ‘health for all’. The overriding concern about unaffordable medicines in high-income countries is bringing the  injustice into sharp focus. The unsustainable economic model for pharmaceutical treatments has, for decades, dogged low- and middle-income countries. And at the centre of medicines policy debates, regardless of where or in what context they occur, HAI, with its unflinching courage to take on complex issues that are often muddled with conflicts of interest, is needed more than ever.

In the past year, HAI continued to operationalise its diversification strategy. The organisation responded to emerging medicines policy issues and identified new areas in which it will most greatly impact the health of individuals and communities. Its disease-specific programmes, which challenge the paucity of access to insulin and snakebite prevention and treatment measures, have identified, mobilised and now lead the field in research, evidence and policy intervention. In just three short years…

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