{"id":20594,"date":"2020-12-09T09:57:34","date_gmt":"2020-12-09T13:57:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=20594"},"modified":"2020-12-14T00:42:51","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T04:42:51","slug":"jim-yong-kim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/jim-yong-kim\/","title":{"rendered":"Jim Yong Kim: The Case for Cheaper Antibiotics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Who is Jim Yong Kim in <em>Mountains Beyond Mountains<\/em>? How did he contribute to lowering the price of antibiotics for treating <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/multi-drug-resistant-tuberculosis\/\">multi-drug resistant tuberculosis<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jim Yong Kim is a Korean-American physician who co-founded Partners in Health, a non-profit organization committed to bringing medical care to those in need.\u00a0Kim helped increase access to treatment for MDR tuberculosis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read more to learn how Jim Yong Kim contributed to lowering the price of antibiotics for MDR TB treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Jim Yong Kim\u2019s Case for Cheaper Antibiotics<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Jim Young Kim is a Koren-American physician who co-founded Partners in Health and worked with his long-time colleague Paul Farmer (also a doctor and an anthropologist) to raise funding for treating tuberculosis in Peru. Their efforts were successful, but Kim realized that a more long-term solution was needed to lower the cost of the antibiotic drugs, especially the ones used to treat multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Drug prices depend on the quantities made and the companies making them. <strong>Big companies often charge more money for a drug than smaller companies that make the same drug.<\/strong> If they could find smaller drug companies that already made the antibiotics, or convince small companies that didn\u2019t make them to start, they could reduce costs by around 95 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jim realized that it would be easier to convince smaller drug companies to make the antibiotics if the WHO designated the medicines as \u201cessential.\u201d Despite the prevalence of TB in the world, the drugs weren\u2019t listed as \u201cessential\u201d because they were infrequently used relative to other more common drugs. Members of the WHO considered it dangerous to list the drugs as essential because it would lower the costs and make them widely available, potentially fueling antibiotic resistance.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Jim Yong Kim argued that as they\u2019d witnessed in Peru, drug resistance was already a phenomenon, and would merely get worse without access to appropriate, inexpensive drugs. Kim also advocated for the creation of a committee to control the distribution of the antibiotics used to treat MDR patients\u2014any project attempting to treat TB or MDR patients had to have an already established plan for treating TB and minimizing drug-resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The WHO agreed to add the antibiotics to its essential list, which in turn led to more small manufacturers making the drugs and the costs dropping 84-95 percent.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who is Jim Yong Kim in Mountains Beyond Mountains? How did he contribute to lowering the price of antibiotics for treating multi-drug resistant tuberculosis? Jim Yong Kim is a Korean-American physician who co-founded Partners in Health, a non-profit organization committed to bringing medical care to those in need.\u00a0Kim helped increase access to treatment for MDR tuberculosis. Read more to learn how Jim Yong Kim contributed to lowering the price of antibiotics for MDR TB treatment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":14136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,33,160],"tags":[166],"class_list":["post-20594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-people","category-science","tag-mountains-beyond-mountains","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Jim Yong Kim: The Case for Cheaper Antibiotics - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jim Yong Kim is a doctor and a co-founder of PIH. 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Read about his role in lowering the cost of antibiotics for treating tuberculosis in Peru.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/jim-yong-kim\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-12-09T13:57:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-12-14T04:42:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/the-plant-paradox-pills-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1709\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Darya Sinusoid\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Darya Sinusoid\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/jim-yong-kim\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/jim-yong-kim\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Darya Sinusoid\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/0421cce75bc249b11e2517b3a91f9c46\"},\"headline\":\"Jim Yong Kim: The Case for Cheaper Antibiotics\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-12-09T13:57:34+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-12-14T04:42:51+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/jim-yong-kim\/\"},\"wordCount\":395,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/jim-yong-kim\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/the-plant-paradox-pills-scaled.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Mountains Beyond Mountains\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Health\",\"People\",\"Science\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/jim-yong-kim\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/jim-yong-kim\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/jim-yong-kim\/\",\"name\":\"Jim Yong Kim: The Case for Cheaper Antibiotics - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/jim-yong-kim\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/jim-yong-kim\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/the-plant-paradox-pills-scaled.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-12-09T13:57:34+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-12-14T04:42:51+00:00\",\"description\":\"Jim Yong Kim is a doctor and a co-founder of PIH. 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