Life expectancy in Spain is 83 years, but with a quality of life of only 67, according to the director of IAVI

“Who wants to live 15 years with a poor quality of life? We need prevention to extend healthy years of life. Spain allocates 97 percent of its health budget to treating diseases and only three percent to prevention,” he said. his participation in the V Symposium of the Health Observatory of El Español and Invertia.

Among other things, he criticized the waiting times for drugs to come onto the market. “In the US, an approved drug goes on sale the next day. In Spain it takes 1.7 years, but not only that: only 50 percent of approved drugs go on sale. Without prevention, we increase the burden of disease by directing our resources to preventable interventions. We must reduce these diseases to have greater access to innovation.

Céspedes also focused on health education, which is key to disease prevention, as “in Spain, 21 percent of people have high cholesterol, 20 percent have hypertension, 15 percent have mental health, 12 percent have low back pain, eight percent have diabetes, eight percent have osteoarthritis and two percent have COPD. “All of these diseases make up a significant portion of our disease burden and can be prevented through five tools: exercise, mental exercise, healthy diet, sleep and healthy interpersonal relationships,” he said.

“This should be the government’s priority. We are developing a tuberculosis vaccine developed by University of Zaragoza researcher Carlos Martin, produced in Galicia, and the Spanish government is not yet contributing. The German government gave us money, Bill Gates, and this is a great opportunity to put Spain on the global map of innovation,” he said.

On the other hand, Cespedes emphasized that nonprofit associations can take over AIDS vaccine research because they have funding that the pharmaceutical industry cannot qualify for, but “they do not have the resources that the pharmaceutical industry has. he has it.” For this reason, “collaboration is essential to promote innovation and to ensure that these innovations are available throughout the world,” he noted.