Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News
  • Published:

Cheap drugs pulled despite wealth gap in middle-income countries

Nature Medicine volume 17, page 1023 (2011)Cite this article

Subjects

Most pharmaceutical and aid groups base their tiered pricing schemes for drug discounts on average per-capita income levels by country. But the growing wealth of many developing countries is adding a wrinkle to the calculus of which nations get cheap access to essential medicines. Some experts assert that basing prices on average income doesn't work for the growing pool of middle-income countries, where many people are left below the poverty line and are therefore unable to afford medicine despite booms in local industries.

“The poor people in the countries are stuck in the middle,” says Prashant Yadav, the director of healthcare delivery research at the University of Michigan's William Davidson Institute in Ann Arbor. “That's where the big problem lies.”

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Authors
  1. Hannah Waters
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Waters, H. Cheap drugs pulled despite wealth gap in middle-income countries. Nat Med 17, 1023 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0911-1023

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0911-1023

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing