May 21 2011
A U.N. Conference on Trade and Development report issued last week suggested "[l]ocal production of pharmaceuticals in some poor African and Asian countries, such as Ethiopia, Uganda, and Bangladesh, has the potential to improve access to essential drugs for many of the one billion people who live in the world's least developed countries," BMJ News writes. The report notes that local pharmaceutical manufacturing development must focus on public health, and investment in the sector "would boost the prospects to manufacture locally cheaper generic medicines to treat a range of infectious illness such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and neglected tropical diseases, as well as chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and cancers" (Zarocostas, 5/18).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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