Lecture Series

Roger Jeffery
on
Access to Appropriate Medicines: Challenges for Nepal

Many different factors limit the possibility of the general population getting access to appropriate medicines at prices they can afford. For a country like Nepal, where the indigenous industry is small and must rely on imports, issues of physical availability and price loom large. But there are some other major issues for Nepal in the current global pharmaceuticals scenario. If prices are low, but doctors and pharmacists routinely over- or under-prescribe, use drugs that are dangerous in some ways, or are unsafe, access to medicines can still lead to more ill-health, not less.

How is the pharmaceuticals industry changing globally, and what implications will this have for a country like Nepal? Data from two research projects looking at drug availability and clinical trials in Nepal andelsewhere in South Asia will be used in answering these questions.

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Roger Jeffery is Professor of Sociology at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. Since 2005, he has been involved in a series of projects on contemporary issues in public health in India and elsewhere and is currently the Principal Investigator in Edinburgh on two externally-funded research projects: Biomedical and Health Experimentation in South Asia: Critical Perspectives on Collaboration, Governance and Competition (BHESA) and Access to Medicines in Africa and South Asia (AMASA). His research interests include sociology of health and population, agrarian change, social welfare, education, and the environment in South Asia. He has conducted a variety of research projects in India since 1972, including research in village and small-town north India looking at how religious group membership and caste interrelate with childbearing, fertility behaviour, gender politics and schooling, in the context of agrarian change and the decline of the state.

Professor Jeffery’s recent publications include Degrees without Freedom: Education, Masculinities and Unemployment in North India (2008) (co-authored with Craig Jeffrey and Patricia Jeffery). He has also co-edited Change and Diversity: Economics, Politics and Society in Contemporary India (2010) with Anthony Heath. He has also published in numerous journals such as Comparative Education, Globalisation and Health, Contemporary South Asia, International Journal of Inclusive Education, and Journal of Health Studies, among others.