Generic drug makers urged to help close Africa’s medicine access gap

In an article for Citizen Digital, Benjamin Muriuki covers the release of the Access to Medicine Foundation’s new report from its Generic & Biosimilar Medicines Programme, ‘Africa’s evolving healthcare landscape: How generic medicine manufacturers are expanding medicine supply and availability.’

As rates of non-communicable diseases rise in Africa and infectious diseases and maternal health conditions continue to cause preventable deaths, generic medicine manufacturers are stepping in to address gaps in access to essential medicines.

The article captures a key takeaway from the report, namely, that while Africa’s current market conditions pose major challenges, they also represent opportunities for drug-makers to strengthen local and regional production of medicines.

It notes multiple strategies that manufacturers assessed in the report as using to address access gaps, e.g. investing in local production of active pharmaceutical ingredients, diversifying suppliers where local production is not feasible and seeking longer-term supply agreements to provide greater certainty over demand and production planning.

While there are pathways that manufacturers are taking to improve access to their products, the article also mentions that greater regional trade integration, regulatory harmonisation and investment in pharmaceutical manufacturing could create more favourable conditions for manufacturers to expand their presence across African markets.