|
|
| Home | Current Issue | Archives | Topic Collections | Search | Blog | Subscribe | Contact Us | Help |
|
Health Affairs, 28, no. 4 (2009):
948
doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.28.4.948 © 2009 by Project HOPE |
|
 |
|||||||||||||
Tools & Technologies |
PROLOGUE
Spreading Tools And Technologies
New drugs, vaccines, and diagnostic tests could save millions of lives each year in the developing world, but organizations wishing to deliver them will confront a multifaceted problem: how to get products to people who need them most. Target populations may lack access to health clinics or other venues where they can obtain needed therapies. Manufacturers may not want to develop products without the promise of reasonable profits. Then there’s the problem of managing the many players—international, national, and local—that must cooperate in creating a product and getting it to the user. The papers in this section examine lessons learned from successes and failures of the recent past.
Ramanan Laxminarayan and Hellen Gelband describe the launch of an international effort to enable populations in malaria-endemic regions to obtain the most appropriate and effective drugs. Cash-strapped patients in much of Africa often buy antimalarial medicines cheaply from local vendors instead of obtaining them at public health clinics. This means that they may end up taking undesirable drugs that can increase malarial resistance. Hence the recent advent of the Global Fund’s new Affordable Medicines Facility-malaria (AMFm) program, which will subsidize the purchase of artemesinin-combination therapy (ACT) drugs in the private and public sectors.
Laura Frost and Michael Reich examine six case histories—ranging from the successful campaign to deliver an antiparasitic drug for the treatment of schistosomiasis, to failed efforts to promote Norplant and the female condom—and offer strategies that can help aid groups overcome obstacles. In another paper, A.K. Nandakumar and colleagues reveal how governments can act as stewards of campaigns to bring technologies to low-income countries while also marshalling local resources, including volunteers to reach the people.
Finally, Robert Hecht and colleagues examine how to encourage research and development of life-saving products that might not promise big profits. They investigate recent innovations, such as the soon-to-be launched "advance market commitment" for pneumonia vaccine, and others on the horizon.
| Home | | | Current Issue | | | Archives | | | Topic Collections | | | Search | | | Blog | | | Subscribe | | | Contact Us | | | Help |
|
© 2001-2009 Project
HOPE–The People-to-People Organization |
||||||||||||||||