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Short abstract:

From 1975, independent Mozambique adopted a pharmaceutical policy to rationalise drug provision and purchasing, by restricting drugs to 300 products, with generic names only. This paper will revisit the Mozambican experience to address if it could be a model for current Global South health policies.

Long abstract:

When Mozambique achieved independence in 1975, health was among the main priorities of the new socialist government. The provision of pharmaceutical products went hand in hand with nationalisation and socialisation of medicine to bring health care to the people. A Technical Commission on Pharmacy and Therapeutics was set up two months into independence to rationalise the drug provision. Its first mission was to comb through the 13,000 drugs previously registered in Colonial Mozambique during Portuguese domination. However, the country had only one graduated pharmacist and a limited health budget. Thus, rationalisation aimed to select a restricted list of drugs by combining both medical and economic reasoning, adopting mandatory generic nomenclature and creating a new system of provision of drugs for the country. The health authorities in Mozambique also got engaged at the WHO and other fora, actively participating in the debates of that period on Essential Medicines Lists and advocating technical cooperation to foster local production of drugs in the Third World. In the early 1980s, several journal publications and book chapters authored by Mozambican health authorities and foreign medical internationalists working in Mozambique promoted the success of these policies in achieving substantial price reductions for medicines and increasing the volume of purchases, with only 300 drugs selected. This communication will interrogate if at the time Mozambique became a model on pharmaceutical policies for low-income countries, and how this experience could be revisited regarding the current challenges on health provision for the Global South.