A film on access to essential medicines
Let me hand you straight over to Duncan Still, a medical student at Nottingham UK, but also a talented film maker as you will soon see—Rhona 
What you’re about to watch is the culmination of a year’s work. Let me give you the background: as some of you may know, the recent IFMSA conference held in Canterbury (Aug 2007) had as its central theme the topic of Access to Essential Medicines. I was Theme Coordinator and as such, had to come up with ways to bring the theme alive throughout the conference. As a team, we came with up all sorts of ingenious ways to get people learning about the topic—the overall idea being to first get people educated around the topic, then to motivate them to do something about it and finally to activate a range of projects for people to go home and get involved in. The pièce de résistance in our educational barrage was undoubtedly the film you are about to see. (click here)
It was dreamt up in a brainstorming session we had early on in the preparations for the conference and it seemed like too good an idea to let go. I fortunately had friends in the film world, so the idea began to take shape fairly quickly. Though we had no money and no immediate prospect of getting any, we somehow managed to get a film crew together and set up the necessary interviews to make the pilot film. Initially it was just me but it soon became clear that I needed someone to bounce ideas around with and to help give the film focus and structure. Serendipity, in the form of my housemate and fellow medical student, Sarah, stepped in and she took up the reins as co-director and editor of the longer follow-up film. Together we took the project forward from being a whimsical idea to being the fully-fledged documentary that we now have.
Along the way we’ve had amazing strokes of luck: being invited to important meetings hosted by DFID and The Lancet, getting to meet to Queen of the Netherlands at an OECD conference, getting funding from the BMA and an NGO (Skillshare International), finding out that we could use the University of Nottingham’s film and edit kit (for FREE!) and just meeting the right people at the right time (like Rhona at The Lancet who has been amazingly good at pulling the right strings and whispering in the right ears!). It all goes to show what can be done when you have a good idea and have the courage to run with it.
The film is a starting point for people who are interested in knowing more about the issues surrounding Access to Essential Medicines. In it, we interview medical students, representatives from NGOs, the Pharmaceutical industry and experts from within academia. We look at what we mean by AEM, why it’s an important issue, who the major players are and what can be done to improve the situation. It can only brush the surface, so if you’re interested in knowing more, try going to the ukam website —the Access to Essential Medicines tab on the left hand side—or just keep visiting this site or others like it! Duncan Still
We would like to thank the BMA, Skillshare International and the University of Nottingham Audiovisual Department for their help. Without them, this film would not have been possible.