Local production for access to medical products: developing a framework to improve public health

Poor medicine availability is a key barrier to access to medicines. This report provides an entry point for supporting the local production of medicines, vaccines and diagnostics in developing countries. The paper forms part of a comprehensive project, and reflects some of its practical conclusions.

The document reveals that substantial production of generic medicines, vaccines and diagnostics already takes place in a number of low- and middle-income countries. Still, the countries that demonstrated the most advanced levels of production were consistently strengthened by technology transfer in addition to having greater coherence in their domestic policies.

Conclusions are that:

• it is obvious that technology transfer helps increasing the competitiveness of local production initiatives for medicines
• medical products must not be seen purely as commodities, and factors such as national health security have to be considered
• indeed, the biggest barrier to medical products’ technology transfer is lack of R&D capacity in developing countries
• for technology transfer to be attractive and successful, a win–win condition is required
  

The authors draw the following policy recommendations:

• there is a need to bring coherence between industrial policy and health policy so they share specific common objectives
• the local manufacture of unavailable medical products can be fostered through the design of appropriate health innovation policies
• governments can facilitate transfer of technology in close collaboration with other governments, international organisations, foreign companies and local enterprises through policy incentives
• the private-sector actors that produce important medical products must be encouraged with appropriate and coordinated health and economic policies
• in this respect, in order to promote local production, it is important for governments to have in place supporting medicine pricing policies
• developing appropriate intellectual property regimes, and investment policies and facilitate jointventures are much recommended