Gaëlle Krikorian

Rationing hepatitis C treatment in the context of austerity policies in France and Cameroon: A transnational perspective on the pharmaceuticalization of healthcare systems

New powerful drugs against hepatitis C can cure the disease, but they are not widely distributed because their exorbitant prices are destabilizing healthcare systems in both African and European countries. This article takes access to hepatitis C treatments since 2013 in France and in Cameroon as a lens to analyze the rationing of pharmaceutical treatments in relation to recent transformations of health systems. Access to these treatments is analyzed thanks to ethnographic observation and interviews lead in Paris and Yaoundé, with patients, associations, health professionals and public health experts. In Cameroon, rationing takes place through various layers of socio-economic restrictions, and no patient organization advocates for hepatitis treatment. In France, access to hepatitis C treatments has become politicized, and collective mobilizations have denounced rationing as a threat to the promise of universal social security. In this study, we examine Africas long experience with rationing in the context of structural adjustment, and we bring together experiences in France and Cameroon. This article analyses the phenomenon of the pharmaceuticalization of healthcare systems, that is to say the growing use of pharmaceuticals in healthcare systems, by documenting the social and political construction of scarcity. Indeed, whereas pharmaceuticalization is a concept that has often been used in situations of drugs abundance, a parallel analysis of rationing highlights a political economy of pharmaceuticals that shapes public health debates and policies according to an economy of scarcity, especially in times of austerity.

Politiser les politiques européennes

Seule position consequente : traiter l’Union europeenne comme un des plans de l’action et du jugement politiques, ni plus, ni moins ; y reperer des clivages, s’y situer, en produire ; identifier des possibles et des obstacles ; des allies et des ennemis ; y faire en somme, ici aussi, pas forcement plus mais pas moins qu’ailleurs, de la politique, tout simplement.

Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines: Paradoxes in Moroccan Policy

This up-to-date book examines pharmaceutical development, access to medicines, and the protection of public health in the context of two fundamental changes that the global political economy has undergone since the 1970s, the globalization of trade and production and the increased harmonization of national regulations on intellectual property rights.

au service des PMA

Il s’agit d’essayer de comprendre comment la dynamique de la relation transferentielle, avec son jeu de projections reciproques, se traduit dans les reves, tant du patient que de l’analyste, et de voir comment on peut travailler les reves, mais aussi comment ils nous travaillent.