Hepatitis C and pharmaceutical multinationals. An approach to the case of Basque Country (Spain) in 2014/2015

Background: The objective of this article is to analyze the situation in the early years of direct-acting antibiotic (DAA) treatments for hepatitis C in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (CAPV) of Spain.
Methods: It have been used secondary sources, through a bibliographic review as well such as searching for news in the media of that time, in order to know the situation that developed between 2014 and 2015 in the Baque Country (Spain). I have been viewed videos found on the transparency web of the Basque Government (Irekia), on the commissions of the Basque Parliament that developed in this regard. In the case of information about pharmaceuticals and hepatitis C, a bibliographic review of scientific articles and pages has been used specialized websites, as well as reports from official institutions.
Results: Pharmaceutical company profits are no longer based on medical research for the development of drugs and their subsequent sale, but mainly on the purchase and sale of other pharmaceuticals, and the ability to be able to obtain medications that are going to be approved for use before they are approved. The specific case of the CAPV and hepatitis C treatments is a good example of the difficulties of upper-middle-income countries. And we have been able to see how the first years of treatment with DAAs were surrounded by many conflicts, both due to economic issues for the health system itself and its viability, and due to the management of treatments and litigation with people affected by HCV.
Conclusions: The concept of equity is a central issue in the case of ADD treatments for people with hepatitis C in the Basque Country. Equity was used both in the Strategic Plan to Address Hepatitis C in the SNS, and in the public appearances of those responsible for Osakidetza, to defend the way in which it was being carried out the distribution of medicines. In this regard, it is important to remember that the main segment of the population with HCV were people who had become infected through the shared use of syringes during drug use. And it is that, the The Ministry of Health itself recognizes the discrimination suffered by drug users, and even more so, those who consume them by injection. Therefore, it can be stated that an intersectional perspective should have been taken into account both in the diagnosis and in the development of the strategic plan, as well as when developing the subsequent strategy and specific actions, so that the affected people for hepatitis C would have been truly treated equitably. Or in other words, the fact that the segment of the population mainly affected by hepatitis C were people who injected drugs, meant that the way public institutions acted was not equitable.