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.
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.