AEI’s “AEIdeas”: Tuberculosis rates may rise due to inferior treatment
Roger Bate, visiting scholar at AEI, discusses the potential impact of changes in donor policies, particularly shifting from global to national purchase of TB drugs, on drug quality and patient outcomes. Bate notes, “The temptation to favor local producers with tariffs or quotas on imports starts as local companies cannot hope to compete. And as donors now start to pull back from nations and programs, local companies are likely to win business since they employ people and pay taxes locally. But the outcome for TB patients, and possibly malaria and HIV patients, is not a good one. Expect quality to go down and price to go up” (10/29).