The economics of pharmaceutical supply in Tanzania

This paper analyzes the patterns of purchasing, distribution, and utilization of pharmaceuticals currently found in Tanzania, an underdeveloped country in Africa. Like other nations in the Third World, Tanzania offers the prospect of a rapidly expanding market for the multinational pharmaceutical industry. However, this market has been to a large extent developed by the intense promotional activities of the drug companies themselves. In addition to normal marketing methods, these companies indulge in techniques which would be neither acceptable nor legal in developed countries. As a result, expensive proprietary drugs are overpurchased and overprescribed, mainly in the large urban hospitals, with consequent deprivation of other health care facilities, particularly those for the rural peasants who form the majority of the population. The activities of the multinational pharmaceutical companies in the Third World are therefore an important component in the continuing underdevelopment of health in these nations.