Priti Krishtel

Health Justice Advocate

MacArthur Fellow

Public Speaker

Meet Priti

Priti Krishtel is a health justice lawyer, a movement builder, and an unapologetic visionary, who believes in a possible future where every single person on earth can access the medicine they need to heal.

Priti cut her teeth in India in the early 2000s, just as momentum for a universal treatment program for HIV was gaining steam. She joined the groundswell of activism–from the streets to the courtrooms–as India became the first country to enact a health-friendly patent law. This cleared the way for the legal challenges that would make I-MAK, which she co-founded the following year, a global force in the access to medicines movement. Over two decades, Priti and her team investigated and exposed structural inequities in the medicines system worldwide, moving policy from the ground up.

In 2022 Priti received the MacArthur Fellowship for “galvanizing a movement to center people instead of only commercial interests.” Today, she is focused on being a force for cultural transformation–writing, speaking, and collaborating with unusual suspects, to ensure that everybody understands what is at stake for access to medicines and that they have a fierce, joyful, collective role to play.

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“Our ability to heal should not depend on our ability to pay or where we live.”

-Priti Krishtel, Museum of Modern Art, 2022

TED Speaker.

People can’t afford their medication, and the problem is growing worse with each year that passes. To solve this problem, Priti has championed a vision for an inclusive patent system that is more accountable to the public. She calls for a future in which people can actively participate in decisions that impact their health and the health of their loved ones.

Here, Priti sheds light on how we've lost sight of the patent system's original intent -- and offers five reforms for a redesign that would serve the public and save lives. This TED talk has been viewed more than 2 million times.

MacArthur Fellow.

According to Marlies Carruth, Director of the MacArthur Fellows program, “The 2022 MacArthur Fellows are architects of new modes of activism, artistic practice, and citizen science. They are excavators uncovering what has been overlooked, undervalued, or poorly understood. They are archivists reminding us of what should survive.”

Exposing the inequities in access to affordable, life-saving medications on a global scale, Priti was named a MacArthur fellow in 2022.

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