Background: India is an increasingly influential player in the global pharmaceutical market. Key parts of the drug regulatory system are controlled by the states, each of which applies its own standards for enforcement, not always consistent with others. A pilot study was conducted in two major...

This Health Policy Outlook assesses the market for chronic disease medications such as antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) to treat HIV/AIDS. A tiered, or differential, pricing structure serves public health by ensuring the greatest affordability of patented drugs as well as maximizing profits to the...

Phase 1 of the Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria (AMFm) is a $225 million initiative that was launched in 2010 in an effort to increase access to safe and effective artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) by dramatically lowering their price with a global subsidy. The AMFm also...

Legal but poorly made, or substandard, drugs can be lethal. The problem is most prevalent in emerging markets, where gross flaws in production, especially by domestic producers selling only in local markets, are easily detected by simple quality-control tests. These problems will worsen as more...

In an effort to increase competition and decrease price, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria recently began asking some grant recipients to use international competitive bidding processes for certain drug purchases. Unfortunately, for countries like Kenya, this request has...

A range of antimalarial drugs were procured from private pharmacies in urban and peri-urban areas in the major cities of six African countries, situated in the part of that continent and the world that is most highly endemic for malaria. Semi-quantative thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and...

Background: The medicine registration process is not just a matter of formality but involves assessment of medicine quality and stability. It is perhaps the most important as well as the simplest aspect of medicine regulation. This study attempts to ascertain whether registered medicines perform...

Background: Increasing competition generally decreases product prices, but in the case of pharmaceuticals, this is only beneficial if competitor products are therapeutically equivalent. This study analyzed drug samples from countries with emerging economies, assessing them for basic quality....