Access to medicines is fundamental for people to achieve their right to health. While governments have the primary responsibility for ensuring access to health care...the role of the pharmaceutical industry in providing a vital element – medicines – carries its own responsibilities...Current industry approaches do not address the problem sufficiently. Major shortcomings include: a failure to implement systematic and transparent tiered-pricing mechanisms for medicines of therapeutic value to poor people...lack of research and development (R&D) to address the dearth of dedicated products for diseases that predominantly affect poor people...persistent inflexibility on intellectual property protection...too heavy a focus on donations...[refers to Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi-Aventis, Wyeth]