Universal Health Coverage and Essential Medicines

T1International supports universal health coverage as the long-term foundation for equitable diabetes care, where insulin, monitoring supplies, GLP-1 medicines, and mental health support are built into national health systems rather than left to charity, patient assistance programs, or chance.

We have brought this message directly to global decision-makers:

New York advocates represented patients at the United Nations Universal Health Coverage Multi-stakeholder Hearing, and . We also helped shape the

• Representing patients at the United Nations Universal Health Coverage Multi-stakeholder Hearing,
• Pushing the WHO’s High-Level Commission on NCDs to recognize diabetes registries, insulin in emergency kits, and lower-cost essential supplies as building blocks of universal coverage, and
• Advocating to shape the WHO’s first Global Diabetes Coverage Targets, adopted in 2022, to commit to 100% access to affordable insulin and blood glucose monitoring by 2030.

Many other medicines other than insulin can be essential for people with different types of diabetes including GLP-1 drugs, SGLTs, statins, and more. These drugs can reduce the risk of complications and can be life-changing. Unfortunately, many of these drug manufacturers are following the insulin playbook:

• A one-month supply of commonly used GLP-1 medicines could be sold at a profit (opens in a new tab) for under $75/mo, and SGLT2s for under $4 but are sold for substantially higher and remain almost entirely unavailable in low-and middle-income countries.
• The same patent monopoly tactics used to keep insulin prices high are being used to keep GLP-1 prices high.
• Meanwhile, manufacturers have been shifting production capacity to the more profitable GLP-1s contributing to insulin shortages and threatening lives.

T1International believes that all people with diabetes deserve access to the medicines that work best for their bodies. The same structural solutions we are fighting for on insulin, including patent reforms, public pharma, and price caps, apply here too.