About the Learning Exchange – This activity has concluded

This short 3-month learning exchange was a collaboration between the JLN and USAID’s Medicines, Technologies and Pharmaceutical Services (MTaPS) program to share and compare country experiences in strengthening national pharmaceutical systems and discuss its facilitating role in achieving UHC goals. The premise for the learning exchange was that accelerating progress toward UHC requires strengthened pharmaceutical systems to balance the competing objectives of ensuring the availability of safe, effective, quality pharmaceutical products and health technologies; ensuring equitable access to these products; ensuring their appropriate use; and keeping costs affordable.  After scoping this topic with JLN participants, pricing strategies for medical products emerged as a strong area of interest.  Some of the pricing related issues countries were particularly interested in included: price regulation in the private sector, effective negotiation of prices for single-sourced products, and the feasibility of sharing drug prices.  This exchange focused only on external reference pricing, internal reference pricing, regulating mark-ups and promoting generic medicines.  It represented the first medicines-specific topic on the JLN platform and laid the foundation for other related technical topics. 

Participating Countries

• Kenya
• Malaysia
• Nepal
• Philippines
• Thailand
• Vietnam
• Bangladesh
• Colombia
• Denmark
• Ghana
• India
• Lebanon
• Mongolia
• Myanmar
• Rwanda
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom