Three mothers and their babies sitting on a step with a health worker in Ethiopia. The babies have just been weighed to monitor their growth.
Credit: Nancy Durrell McKenna / Safehands For Mothers
Report summary

Access to healthcare interventions

Too many people lack access to healthcare interventions they need. Wellcome’s first access to healthcare interventions report provides a series of case studies on our access work, outlines some of the major challenges faced by funders of R&D for health, and makes five commitments to tackle these challenges.

Highlights 

Wellcome and other funders of health R&D have an important role to play in addressing inequities in access. Our mission is to improve health for all, and we can only make progress towards this if the interventions we fund reach people regardless of where they live or how much money they have, and if these interventions address areas of unmet need.

We currently support access in various ways through how we fund and what we fund – in areas like drug-resistant infections, cholera and monoclonal antibodies. However, there is much more that we could do, and we are committed to taking further action.

Key challenges for funders of health R&D

  • lack of transparency is hindering attempts to implement best practice access
  • fragmented approach by funders makes the system more complicated and provides incentives that may work against access

What Wellcome will do

  • challenge ourselves on transparency 
  • support the development of an online repository of contractual provisions
  • develop and promote Global Good Access Practices
  • build upon Wellcome’s own set of Wellcome principles on access
  • support the establishment of an Annual Global Forum

Downloads 

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