Bitter Pills:Medicines & The Third World Poor | Page 179

manufacturers. But in 1981 governments of all the industrialised countries (with
the sole exception of the United States) showed their willingness to take a stand
to safeguard the health of the world's poor by voting for the International Code
of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes. In the build-up to the World Health
Assembly vote, the British and other Governments showed their readiness to listen
and to be swayed both by the body of professional opinion and pressure from
the general public and supporters of aid agencies and other non-governmental
organisations.

NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS
An assortment of very different organisations share an active interest in the supply
and marketing of Pharmaceuticals in developing countries. The views of the
manufacturers are represented both by national and international industry
associations whose main function is to bring pressure to bear to defend their
members' interests. Similarly, the lobby on behalf of patients and consumers
(particularly the Third World poor) is actively pursuing changes in current drug
marketing practices. The activities of lobbyists based in the rich world need to
be looked at alongside those of Third World pressure groups because they work
closely together. We look first at a number of charitable organisations based in
developed countries, that are involved in supplying drugs to charities in developing
countries.
ECHO
ECHO (the acronym for Equipment to Charity Hospitals Overseas) in Britain,
and Action Medeor, in West Germany, are both non-profit-making organisations
that supply essential drugs to charity and mission hospitals throughout the Third
World. We shall concentrate on ECHO, the larger of these two similar, but
unconnected organisations.
ECHO was set up in 1966 on the inspiration of the Burtons, a husband and wife
team, after they returned from carrying out medical misionary work in Africa.
Whilst in Africa they had experienced the chronic shortages of basic medical
equipment. Back in Britain, they launched an imaginative scheme to collect
obsolete, but perfectly serviceable, hospital equipment and send it to poor countries
where it would be put to good use.
Today the renovation of used hospital equipment is a relatively small part of
ECHO'S operations. But the supply of new equipment, worth just under £1 million
in 1980, has grown to the extent that ECHO now has a Technical Department
to provide a back-up service to customers and adapt equipment so that it can use
solar energy systems. Standard equipment is either bought at competitive prices,
or ECHO commissions small manufacturers to produce specific items, like
operating tables, to very simple, highly cost-conscious designs.
In the early 1970s ECHO carried out research into its customers' needs and found
that most were facing problems with the escalating cost of basic drugs. Peggy
Burton explains the background to ECHO'S decision to supply drugs: "In 1974
172