Despite all progress in health care, there still are disabling inequalities in access to medicines and health services and billions of people live without access to the necessary health products. There is also an awareness that access to medicines is a broad issue that affects people and health systems worldwide⁶.

Barriers to access to medicines have different roots, but they are deeply interrelated, such as global R&D and production with a focus on potentially more profitable products; intellectual property system plus multilateral and bilateral trade agreements interest conflicts.

The current R&D system of new medicines does not adequately meet the needs of the majority of the world’s population^6,7. Such needs include affordable medicines for diseases with global incidence, new treatments for neglected diseases, new antimicrobials and other essential medicines for conditions that disproportionally affect the poor.

IP has gained particular significance with increased attention to new essential medicines for the treatment of diseases of global incidence, including communicable and non-communicable diseases.

New monopoly medicines, like those for Hepatitis C or Cancer, are being launched at unaffordable prices, bringing health systems near collapse whenever new technologies are made available.

Effective tools for global governance are required to generate medical R&D as a global public good, based on the understanding that a politically and financially sustainable system will require both fair contributions from all, and fair benefit-sharing for all⁶.

Contemporary issues such as access to medicines, pollution, climate change or global equality are confronted with weak political responses and submit politics to technology and finance¹. Nonetheless, Technology has remedied countless evils which used to harm and limit human beings. How can we not feel gratitude and appreciation for this progress, especially in the fields of medicine, engineering, and communications? How could we not acknowledge the work of many scientists and engineers who have provided alternatives to make development sustainable?¹.

As stated in Laudato Si’, “Politics and economy tend to blame each other when it comes to poverty and environmental degradation. It is hoped that they can acknowledge their own mistakes and find forms of interaction directed to the common good”¹.

Pope Francis has drawn attention to the full exercise of human dignity and the cruel consequences of a globalized economy. Based on the Pope thoughts we can conclude that he is challenging us to reflect on the development of nations and of health care, through a discussion on trade agreements and access to medicines. The purpose of this discussion could be to claim that certain health issues, including the elimination of specific diseases, require urgent political attention, above and beyond all other commercial or political interests^8,9.

The Encyclical Letter points to the “intimate relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet, the conviction that everything in the world is connected, the critique of new paradigms and forms of power derived from technology, the call to seek other ways of understanding the economy and progress, the value proper to each creature, the human meaning of ecology, the need for forthright and honest debate, the serious responsibility of international and local policy, the throwaway culture and the proposal of a new lifestyle”¹.

As known: “science and technology are not neutral”¹, but it is our moral obligation to seek, fight and build a better future for those behind us and for the generations we will deliver to. We need to recover the expectations that initiatives like these awake in humanity. “There is also the fact that people no longer seem to believe in a happy future; they no longer have blind trust in a better tomorrow based on the present state of the world and our technical abilities. There is a growing awareness that scientific and technological progress cannot be equated with the progress of humanity and history, a growing sense that the way to a better future lies elsewhere [...]”¹.

The Encyclical Laudato Si’ and other teachings of Pope Francis emphasized some main pillars to encourage a more effective global AIDS response. According to Pope Francis, “caring for our common home, and for all people who live on this earth, requires not just an economic and technological revolution, but also a cultural and spiritual revolution – a profoundly different way of living the relationship between people and the environment, a new way of ordering the global economy”.

Pope Francis insists on the urgency of changing our sense of progress, our management of the economy, and our lifestyle¹⁰.

The report of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines mentions in its preface that in spite of our scientific knowledge, many people and communities in need are neglected due to diverse reasons. Availability, affordability and adaptation to specific settings and patient categories remain problematic. Recommendations from the Report aim to address TRIPS Flexibilities and eliminate TRIPS-plus provisions, to deal with publicly-funded research, with innovation, with governance and with transparency in all the innovation chain⁴.

As the UN Secretary-General has stated during the transition from the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals and 2030 Agenda, if the goal is to leave no one behind, concrete and actionable steps must be enforced by all stakeholders, including governments, policy-makers, business leaders, international organizations and civil society in a worldwide mobilization for improving health and well-being for all.

Yet, as per the Laudato Si’, “the principle of the maximization of profits, frequently isolated from other considerations, reflects a misunderstanding of the very concept of economy”¹.

Even if Pope Francis’s Encyclical does not specifically mention medicines, it truly talks about technology and challenging situations directly related to areas of health. The reflections set forward by Laudato Si’ lead us to realize the connections that exist between trade and health. They also give us elements to correctly frame the need for having innovation in medicines affordable and accessible to those in need. The concern for the poorest of the society is also a fundamental point from the Encyclical that can guide this change in health-trade relationships.

Certainly, not with the State-assured more than 20 years of monopolies and prices set up by the industry with no concern for the consequences, especially making new products unavailable for the poor. After all, “the rich and the poor have equal dignity [...]”¹.

Access to medicines is a complex and multidimensional issue involving public health, social justice and international human rights obligations. Access to medicines’ gap is a paradigm showing how economics and trade rules conflict with human rights, including the right to life, health and development¹¹.

According to the Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, “the technocratic paradigm tends to dominate economic and political life”¹. At the same time, it is recognized that by itself, the market cannot guarantee integral human development and social inclusion. The discussion related to trade and health and the balance between innovation and public health addressing the need to ensure access to medicines as part of the human right to health has been a long battle.

To ensure human dignity and policies having a human rights approach at the core, we need to face and remove barriers, such as intellectual property, monopolies and oligopolies, unaffordability and particularly overwhelming and unacceptable human greed. If we are to really build a better world and a better future for our next generations, we must remedy or correct the misalignments and policy incoherence between the individual and corporate rights of inventors, innovators or manufacturers and the human rights of humankind, discussing trade and health in the context of public health and access to technologies as a right linked to health and life.

In fact, Laudato Si’ stresses “the urgent need for a radical change in the conduct of humanity”. Based on the text, we can affirm that it suggests an ethical foundation for the change. Then, the text gives us a caution: “the most extraordinary scientific advances, the most amazing technical abilities, the most astonishing economic growth, unless they are accompanied by authentic social and moral progress, will definitely turn against men”¹.

For the reasons discussed, we urge further action and we acknowledge Laudato Si’ as a bridge towards ensuring access to medicines with a human rights approach at the core.

In spite of all efforts and promising results from the MDG, millions have been left behind and Member States have agreed on the SDG targeting the year 2030^4,12. This commitment has repeatedly been stressed by Pope Francis, when he mentions that “The future demands of us critical and global decisions in the face of worldwide conflicts which increase the number of the excluded and those in need”¹³.