ingly to a television interviewer that, given the elaborate submissions they had produced, the professional and corporate organizations clearly needed no aid from the government in getting across their views.)
The Public Hearing The variety of people who had actually come to speak at this hearing reflected the ministry’s efforts. They included self-confident medical school professors, representatives of patient groups, and some executives from the pharmaceutical industry. Also present were a cluster of Catholic priests, community organizers in jeans and knit shirts, several people in wheelchairs, and a couple of families wearing pins with the faces of relatives in the center, surrounded by their birth and death dates. Some people were wearing suits, others were in traditional dress, and some looked as if they had just gotten off the bus from the interior and had tried to smooth their wrinkled clothes in the building’s restrooms. Each speaker was given three minutes to make a statement to the committee. The committee would then sort through the proposals to decide on a feasible and affordable EML.
Selected Statements from the Hearing • Director of a provincial government hospital: “Treatments for the most common conditions that bring people to my hospital are the ones that should be included on the list. Our pediatric ward is full of children with pneumonias, gastrointestinal conditions, and malaria. Our adult wards are mostly populated by people with advanced heart disease and diabetes, as well as complications from malaria. We need safe and effective treatments for these to be available in our pharmacy all the time in order to serve the greatest number of people. They understand when we tell them, ‘That is a rare disease; we can do nothing about it.’ But when we say, ‘You have malaria, but you are resistant to the only drug we can provide—go out and buy a more expensive one,’ then they are frustrated. It is getting to the point where people in the community are thinking of the government hospital as a place to go to die.” • Women’s association representative: “The entire list of products for family planning and women’s reproductive health must be included in the EML. For too long the pervasive gender bias in this country has meant that medicines that are only relevant to women have been left off of the Defining an Essential Medicines List in Sudamerica
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