Medicine Across Borders: Exploration of Grey Zones

Medicine Across Borders provides an interdisciplinary space to discuss the issue of substandard and falsified medical products. Scholars from social and medical sciences collaboratively contribute insight to improving safe medicine access. The circulation of medicines and medical products on the informal market is well-known. Stakeholders, including governmental agencies and biotechnic enterprises, invest much effort in designing and implementing macrolevel interventions to limit the spread of such products. Nevertheless, there is a lack of knowledge and understanding of how informal markets function in everyday medicine access and use. This applies to professionals within and beyond academia, state governments, as well as the general public. This book takes an international perspective, examining the issue of substandard and falsified medical products cross nationally. Falsified and poor-quality medicines are prevalent in low- and middle-income countries, but this book also includes research from high-income countries arguing that they too have vulnerabilities, and emphasising the need for vigilance even in well-resourced and well-regulated regimes. Medicine Across Borders: Exploration of Grey Zones provides an interdisciplinary space for a depth and diversity of material that spotlights some contemporary themes hindering access to essential medicines and driving the penetration of substandard and falsified medical products. The authors are drawn from a range of academic disciplines across the social and medical sciences presenting findings from data collected using an eclectic mix of methods and analysis. Surveys, ethnography, narrative case studies, statistical, and thematic analysis are all deployed.