ABSTRACT
The role of regulation in drug markets is complex, as in most countries health policy and industrial policy goals coexist. Innovations in the drug sector depend heavily on the establishment of suitable incentives to efficiently remunerate research and development in this sector and to promote future innovations. The drug market policy in all countries is therefore usually based on the principle of making pharmaceutical products with high quality, safety and effectiveness available to the population. Health policy goals are mostly aimed at making drugs with high therapeutic quality available as quickly as possible at the lowest possible prices. Import liberalisation at the beginning of the 1990s led in most transition countries to increased demand for drugs from industrial nations. The growing availability of nationally and internationally produced drugs in transition countries is for the most part accompanied by deficits in regulations that are present in the area of quality assurance and in distribution and price setting.
