E-drug: Research article - identifying market risk for substandard and falsified medicines: an analytic framework in 4 countries
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Dear E-drug Colleagues,
I'm happy to share our latest paper "Identifying market risk for substandard and falsified medicines: an analytic framework based on qualitative research in China, Indonesia, Turkey and Romania" published in Wellcome Open Research.
The study sought to unravel the political and economic factors which drive the production of substandard and falsified products, and to explain how they reach patients. The worry headline finding is that increasing political commitment to universal health coverage (UHC) is in some cases actively incentivising the production of substandard medicines. It’s also creating market opportunities for falsifiers.
Public procurement policies aimed at lowering prices of medical products push legitimate, profit-driven pharmaceutical companies protect their margins by cutting costs, or withdrawing from less profitable markets, while distributors engage in arbitrage. Meanwhile, health providers sometimes protect profits by 'upselling' patients to medicines not covered by insurers. Cost-cutting can undermine quality assurance, leading to substandard or degraded medicines. Other responses contribute to shortages, irrational demand and high prices. All of these provide market opportunities for producers of falsified products; they also push consumers outside of the regular supply chain, providing falsifiers with easy access to customers.
We have developed a framework to guide country-specific, system-wide analysis of market risks for substandard and falsified products.
Link to the article:
https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/4-70/v1
Link to a short narrated video explaining the framework:
https://vimeo.com/327065595 or https://dataverse.harvard.edu/file.xhtml?fileId=3397022&version=4.0
Please feel free to share the article with your network. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Amalia
Amalia Hasnida, MSc
Researcher
Healthcare Governance Group (HCG)
Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management (ESHPM)
Erasmus University, Rotterdam
the Netherlands
Amalia Hasnida <hasnida@eshpm.eur.nl>