October 17th: The Access to Essential Cancer Medicines symposium will be held just prior to the UICC World Cancer Congress in Geneva. Hosted by the Institute of Cancer Policy - King’s College London, The Global Oncology Program at Queen’s University, Tata Memorial Centre, and University Medical Center Groningen with the Graduate Institute, Geneva it will bring together 60 world leaders building on the momentum from the “Access to Cancer Medicines Summit” hosted by American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago in June 2022.

The symposium includes a keynote presentation by Professor Kalipso Chalkidou, Director of the Health Finance Department at The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, to set the scene as we take stock of the different domains that impact on availability, access and cost of essential cancer medicines and share perspectives on levers for change, for example, pricing policies, health systems strengthening (including capacities to diagnose and treat safely and high quality), financial protection mechanisms and addressing inadequate supply and tendering.

It will also address procurement solutions including regional and global pooling; lessons from AVATT and AMSP, AfImEx Bank guarantees for C19 commodities and the option of expansion to NCDs and especially cancer medicines where the issue of volumes is important. In addition, we will examine markets where regulation is still a huge obstacle to suppliers’ entry and other domains such as:

• The role of domestic manufacturing
• The role of donors and vertical programmes in the era of health systems strengthening and integration
• The opportunities to strengthening procurement (including human resources)
• The need to improve cancer community understanding of the role of the WHO model Essential Medicines List (EML); national EMLs; the wider context of shaping country-specific approaches to sustainable availability of cancer medicines; linkage to reimbursement or efforts towards universal health coverage
• The concept of value and the need for access initiatives to focus on high value medicines.

These conversations are designed to improve understanding of the individual access to cancer medicines initiatives and open opportunities for synergies with allied activities such as the work of the cancer working group to the WHO Model EML as well as identify specific actionable areas for future work.

Video Interviews

Background

In addition to the video interviews provided by ecancer some key papers are also listed below as a set of core underpinning resources to provide the background and context to the discussions: