Dear Michael and Andrei
No one is suggesting that Access to medical devices is all that
matters, but it is a crucial step in achieving the benefits of medical
devices via healthcare interventions, and constitutes one element (the
other two being utilisation and effectiveness) of Effective Coverage,
defined as ˜the ratio of actual health gain from healthcare
interventions to maximum potential health gain achievable from the same
interventions” (WHO).
Access is understood as meeting the requirements of the 4A’s:
availability, accessibility, affordability and acceptability. These
certainly apply to medical devices in their own right and the 3 elements
of Effective Coverage combined, I would suggest, cover the issues that
you are alluding to. My own view therefore is that Access for medical
devices should not be seen or defined differently from that for drugs or
other health technologies, since there is much to be gained from a
common framework.
I would further submit that barriers to true benefits from
drugs/medicines ALSO lie beyond access, and they too have issues around
˜management capacities and recurrent budgets” that need to be
addressed (case in point: the possible cuts in PEPFAR and Global Fund
support for ARVs and the effects this could have in resource-poor
environments).
All that I was suggesting is that we need to leverage and tap into
significant initiatives related to health- and healthcare technologies
as a whole, in order to advance our own cause. That said, I accept that
many Infratechers (myself included) depend for their livelihood on the
fact that medical devices are different from drugs ; )
A luta continua !
Best regards
Mladen Poluta
