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

Global Chief Operating Officer of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), Ana Cespedes, noted that although “Life expectancy in Spain is 83 years, only 67 have a good quality of life.”

“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 the treatment of diseases and only three percent to prevention,” he said during his participation in the V Symposium of the El Español and Invertia Health Observatory.

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 are delivered. Without prevention, we increase the burden of disease by directing our resources to preventable diseases. “These diseases need to be reduced in order to have greater access to innovation.”

Cespedes also influenced health education, which is key to disease prevention as “In Spain, 21 percent 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, Bill Gates, gave us money and this is a great opportunity to put Spain on the global map of innovation,” he said.

On the other hand, Cespedes emphasized that non-profit associations can take over AIDS vaccine research because they have funding that the pharmaceutical industry is not entitled to, but “They don’t have the resources that the pharmaceutical industry has.”

For this reason, “collaboration is essential to promote innovation and to ensure that these innovations are available throughout the world,” he noted.