The Partnership for Safe Medicines-India: Lessons for Emerging Markets

Abstract

While medicines are always expected to be a safe remedy for human ailments, unfortunately, there is also the phenomenon of ‘unsafe medicines’ due to unscrupulous elements in society manufacturing and marketing fake, spurious, mislabeled medicines, as well as medicines with sub-standard ingredients. As more and more consumers are adversely affected by these drugs, and global health concerns grow, efforts were needed to bring stakeholders together to address this public health problem. This was the genesis of the Partnership for Safe Medicines-India. Strategic efforts were required integrating a wide array of stakeholders and early and intensive planning. Lessons learned from this experience may be useful for other emerging markets.