The Open University - Medicating the bottom billion

The Open University played host to a debate about the huge sums spent on the fight against Aids and other killer conditions in developing countries. Discussion at the two-day meeting in Milton Keynes revolved around integrating foreign investment into healthcare and drug production in the world's poorest countries. Joanna Chataway, co-director of the Innogen Centre, which investigates shared ground in the fields of biotechnology and genomics, said the funding balance was not yet right. "In developing new drugs, there is a need to resolve capacity within developing countries so that they not only have access to these medicines, but they are capable of contributing to the production and distribution of them," she said.