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Benefits

Modern medicines can provide many benefits to patients, communities the health system and wider economy. They work by immunising, treating or curing patients of diseases and ailments to improve a patient's quality of life.

  • Immunisations have significantly reduced the incidence of the following diseases  – Polio, smallpox, rubella, measles, mumps, tetanus, chicken pox.
  • 83% of survival gains in cancer are attributable to new modern medicines.
  • Hepatitis C is now curable in more than 90% of treated patients
  • HIV has been transformed from a death sentence to a manageable disease.

Modern medicines also provide savings for the health system downstream. For every $1 spent on new medicines $3 to $10 is saved on hospitalisations for adherent patients with congestive heart failure, high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol.