New UNCTAD, GIZ Toolbox: How To Achieve Policy Coherence For Local Production And Access To Medicines

What do investment, trade, intellectual property, health financing, R&D, industrial and medicines regulation policy have in common? They are all important building blocks for the successful promotion of local pharmaceutical manufacturing. As more and more countries are looking into building their own pharmaceutical production capacities, they need to ensure strong policy coherence to be successful.

Done rightly, local pharmaceutical manufacturing can be an important part of a country’s health system by shortening supply chains, building emergency capacity and aligning production specifics more with the domestic population. Bangladesh’s success of producing 80% of the country’s demand for medicines or Brazil’s experience in issuing compulsory licenses to locally produce patent-protected and expensive medicines during an HIV epidemic are illustrative examples of how a local industry can serve public health goals. Yet, if public health policies are not in sync with industrial policies, access to medicines may not improve. A case in point is India: having built up one of the largest generic pharmaceutical industries worldwide, yet showing low access to medicines domestically.

So, how do policy makers ensure that local pharmaceutical production is supported without undermining the public health need for affordable (imported) medicines? And how do states match their ambition with their commitments to the rules of international trade? The “Tool Box for Policy Coherence in Access to Medicines and Local Pharmaceutical Production” gives answers for policy makers and development professionals.

In line with its title, the document offers hands-on policy advice, with many case studies and a tableau of solutions to specific problems. It is a joint publication by the GIZ Global Project “Access to Medicines” and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

The publication is available following this link:  http://unctad.org/en/pages/PublicationWebflyer.aspx?publicationid=1921

 

Image Credits: GIZ, UNCTAD