Local production and access to medicine in low- and middle-income countries

Overview

This report explores the interface between industrial and health policies. Based on a literature review in the field, the report summarizes previous theoretical and empirical work on local production (LP) of biomedical products, and its potential impact on access to medicines. By ‘products’ we mean medicines and devices, including diagnostics. The report:

• assesses to what extent the linkages between LP and access were explored in previous studies;
• critically analyzes whether the methods employed in the literature were sufficient to suggest a robust relationship between LP and access;
• evaluates whether results obtained could be directly applied to LP conditions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).