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Think Globally, Prescribe Locally: How Rational Pharmaceutical Policy in the U.S. Can Improve Global Access to Essential Medicines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2021

Aaron S. Kesselheim
Aaron S. Kesselheim*
Affiliation:
Harvard Medical School, Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Mass
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Extract

Improving access to essential medicines in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has become a critical health policy issue. Millions more people die each year in poorer countries from diseases that are treated by pharmaceutical agents currently available in higher income nations. Recent medical innovation has tended to focus on problems affecting populations in developed countries and avoid those found exclusively or predominantly in LMICs. The etiology of these disparities is multifactorial, and can include high costs of products, inadequate cooperation between governments and aid agencies, rigid protection of intellectual property rights, and poor local health leadership regarding dissemination of products.

Over the past two decades, there have been growing efforts to reduce global disparities in availability of essential medicines. At the forefront of these efforts have been international agencies such as the World Health Organization, or groups like Médicins Sans Frontières and Partners in Health, which have helped set international health priorities and sought to improve local health care delivery systems.

Type
Article
Information
American Journal of Law & Medicine , Volume 34 , Issue 2-3 , June 2008 , pp. 125 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics and Boston University 2008

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