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Rational Drug Policies In The Asia-PacificPrescribing Cultures and Pharmaceutical Policies in the Asia-PacificEdited by Karen Eggleston Stanford (CA): Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2009; distributed by the Brookings Institution.424 pp., $28.95
Some countries in the Asia-Pacific region devote an extraordinary proportion of national health expenditures to medicines. Prescribing Cultures reports that in China, for example, the figure was 44 percent in 2005; in Taiwan, 28 percent (2006); and in South Korea, 27 percent (2004). (The comparable figure for the United States in 2004 was about 13 percent.) This situation begs for analysis, which is provided in good measure in this collection of twenty papers by thirty researchers, on the forces influencing the use of medicines and pharmaceutical policies in this region. The editor of the book, Karen Eggleston, leads a Stanford University health policy research
1 William A. Zellmer (wzellmer@msn.com) recently retired from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, where his responsibilities included international affairs and health policy related to the use of medicines; he now consults in those areas.
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