Local Production Supports Rural Access to Medicines in Tanzania - Maureen Mackintosh

15 June 2014

On his return from South Africa and Zimbabwe earlier this year, Julius Mugwagwa, who is currently engaged in investigating spending on essential medicines in African contexts, posted a blogpost (reproduced below) entitled Local pharma in Africa: going nowhere, slowly? In it he wrote:

'One consistent argument is that local production will contribute positively to health system targets, and is thus a good place to spend the "health dollars". There, however, seem to be contending views on how good local manufacturing will really be for public health. In fact, the evidence for this is sparse or at best inconclusive.'

In response, I'd like to offer one piece of rather solid evidence that local producers can and do benefit public health. Many people in Africa buy medicines they need - when they can afford them - in cash. And access to essential medicines, though shops and health facilities, is generally worse in rural than in urban areas in Africa. This is certainly the case in Tanzania.

Yet in a recent paper, Local production of pharmaceuticals in Africa and access to essential medicines: 'urban bias' in access to imported medicines in Tanzania and its policy implications Tanzanian and OU researchers have shown that locally based pharmaceutical firms in Tanzania distribute their products equally in rural and in urban areas. That is, you are just as likely to find a locally manufactured tablet, such as a basic antibiotic, in a rural shop or health facility as in an urban pharmacy or health facility. However the same is not true of imported medicines, which you are much less likely to find in rural areas than in town.

It follows that locally based manufacturers are important for supporting rural access to medicines. They appear to have better up-country distribution networks than the importers - perhaps because the local market is their 'home turf' or core business. A decline in local manufacture of medicines in Africa, therefore, may well reduce rural people's access to essential medication.

Professor of Economics and Director of IKD Maureen Mackintosh is Principal Investigator on the DFID/ESRC-funded project 'Industrial productivity, health sector performance and policy synergies for inclusive growth: a study in Tanzania and Kenya'. The project's hypothesis is that better integration between industrial and health policies could improve health service performance while raising economic output, thus contributing to inclusive growth.