The Role of Advocacy

Ideally, advocacy should couple such research efforts to try increase the affordability of the costlier intervention.
For example, antiretroviral therapies for HIV treatment are offered for completely different prices globally. Even
between high-income countries, prices of medications often reflect access to generics, existence of voluntary
licensing agreements (in which the patent-holder, in this case, the drug companies, have an agreement—
usually with another party in a country like the Ministry of Health, for significant cost-containment. The patent-
holder may also license to other parties the right to manufacture, import, or distribute a drug), and international
donor funding to subsidise drug costs (Hill and Pozniak, 2016).