Access to medicines: looking for policy and finding corruption

The analysis aimed to determine whether countries with indicators of robust national drug policy also have good access to medicines, suggesting that policy has a positive effect. The authors also looked into other determinants of the variation in access to medicines across the countries. The study exploited massive data sets from World Health Organization, Health Action International, Transparency International and the World Bank. A sample of 37 low- and middle-income countries was chosen for the analysis. Multiple linear regression was used to examine the association of access to medicines with national drug policy and externality variables of governance including corruption. No relationship was found between national drug policy and access to medicines in the public sector. However, this study did find a relationship between one of the governance indicators, control of corruption, and two important variables of access to medicines: generic medicine price and availability in public secto