Trust and the regulation of pharmaceuticals : south Asia in a globalised world
Abstract
Building appropriate levels of trust in pharmaceuticals is a painstaking and challenging task, involving participants from different spheres of life, including producers, distributors, retailers, prescribers, patients and the mass media. Increasingly, however, trust is not just a national matter, but involves cross-border flows of knowledge, threats and promises. Data for this paper comes from the project 'Tracing Pharmaceuticals in South Asia', which used ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews to compared the trajectories of three pharmaceuticals (Rifampicin, Oxytocin and Fluoxetine) from producer to patient in three sites (north India, West Bengal and Nepal) between 2005-08. The authors argue that issues of trust are crucial in reducing the likelihood of appropriate use of medicines. Unlike earlier discussions of trust, they suggest that trust contexts beyond the patient-practitioner relationship are important and illustrate these arguments through three case studies.
Citation
Brhlikova, P.; Harper, I.; Jeffery, R.; Rawal, N.; Subedi, M.; Santhosh, M.R. Trust and the regulation of pharmaceuticals: South Asia in a globalised world. Globalization and Health (2011) 7 (1) 10. [DOI: 10.1186/1744-8603-7-10]
Links
Trust and the regulation of pharmaceuticals : south Asia in a globalised world