UN meeting on access to medical devices in poorer countries

(September 10, 2010) Health experts from more than 100 countries gathered in Bangkok on Thursday under the auspices of the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) to discuss ways to make life-saving medical equipment more accessible to people in developing countries. “The medical device industry holds great promise for public health, sometimes spectacular promise, sometimes seductive promise,” Margaret Chan, the WHO Director-General, told the more than 350 experts meeting in Thailand’s capital. “Health officials and hospital managers in all countries, at all levels of development, need guidance. We are also holding this forum because the unquestionable benefits of medical devices are so unevenly and unfairly distributed,” she added. According to WHO, there are currently an estimated 10,500 different types of medical devices on the market, raging from the highly sophisticated to the ordinary such as wheelchairs, hearing aids and eyeglasses that improve the quality of life for millions of people. However, according to a new WHO study and an ongoing survey that has so far mapped medical device use in 140 countries, too many people are currently excluded from their benefits. Ten countries have so far reported to WHO that they have no radiotherapy units at all, depriving almost 100 million people of access to cancer treatment. The average availability of computed tomography (CT) scanners is one per 64,900 people on average in high-income countries, but one per 3.5 million people in low-income countries.