Strong medicine: patents, market, and policy challenges for managing neglected diseases and affordable prescription drugs

Oriola, Taiwo Ayodele ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6452-9996 2008. Strong medicine: patents, market, and policy challenges for managing neglected diseases and affordable prescription drugs. Canadian Journal of Law & Technology 7 (3) , pp. 59-125.

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Abstract

Access to affordable prescription drug is the critical mass of any meaningful public health policy. However, the spiralling prescription drug costs and the concomitant access problems are transcendent, posing a daunting challenge for governments of both rich and poor countries. Arguably the greatest challenge for policy makers is how best to secure affordable prescription drug in the name of welfare and equity, without trammelling innovative medicine. However, the combustible mixture of patents, markets, and the pharmaceutical industry’s penchant for maximising profits, has helped shape the current trajectory of pharmaceutical R&D disproportionate targeting of profitable drug representing just ten per cent of the world’s disease burden. By the same markets token, the United States, the country with the most competitive pharmaceutical industry, still struggles against the tide of cross-border purchase of cheaper prescription drug by her citizens in Canada and Mexico. In Britain, as in most European countries, the highly regulated prescription drug pricing regime under the national health insurance scheme, often excludes expensive ‘drug of last resort’ albeit with proven clinical benefits. India has been regulating drug prices since the 1950s, and the recent spike in cheaper generics of patented drugs, has exacerbated tensions, and set local and foreign pharmaceutical industry on a collision course. Using empirical data and relevant literature, the paper critically reviews the cumulative effects of the legal and socio-economic externalities that shape the current global pharmaceutical production trajectory. While noting the imperatives of equitably balancing the inherent conflicts between the pharmaceutical industry’s profit-maximising objectives and public health needs, the paper canvasses for the supplementation of the current patents and markets driven monocultural prescription drug economics, with a normative, non-market, internationally mediated drug production paradigm that is cognisant of the overriding public health needs.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Law
Subjects:	K Law > K Law (General)
Publisher:	Dalhousie University
ISSN:	1702-9228
Related URLs:	http://cjlt.dal.ca/
Last Modified:	19 Oct 2022 09:04
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/19880

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