Emerging Markets' Health and Pharmaceutical Sectors at the Dawn of a Potential Global Financial Crisis of early 2020s

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About this Research Topic

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Background

Contemporary pace of pharmaceutical innovation still remains to be dominated by the Big Pharmaceutical multinationals. Yet demand is exploding among the emerging economies. Major investors are aware that the lion’s share of growth opportunities will take place right there, outside mature high-income OECD nations, as we approach 2050. Emerging markets, commonly designated with acronyms BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) or EM7, remain the core focus of foreign capital investment in the long run strategies and forecasts. Happening alongside with economic slowdown in Western economies, particularly since the last global recession 2007-2017, this evolution has changed entire global macroeconomic landscape reflecting heavily to the global healthcare arena.

Major challenges remain population aging, rising incidence of prosperity diseases, lack of universal insurance coverage and provision of justified and equitable access to medical care for the poor. Inefficient resource allocation and unsatisfactory funding strategies remain quite common. Contribution of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) share in world’s health expenditure as observed through (WHO) criteria has almost doubled (PPP basis) since 1990s. This lengthy and uncertain road forward for the LMICs contains many difficulties: socioeconomic inequalities in medical care access and affordability, large out-of-pocket expenses, and vulnerabilities against catastrophic household expenditures. Broad trends give far greater grounds for optimism. Preventive lifestyle interventions, provision of essential medicines, and spreading of cost-effective basic medical technologies, designated in WHO policy as "best buys" interventions, all contributed to improved early childhood survival and extended life expectancy. Current circumstances in most LMICs are characterized by aging populations, rapid urbanization, and increased citizen expectations in terms of health insurance coverage.

Rapidly developing world regions exhibit substantial heterogeneity in terms of historical legacy in health care establishments, provision, and financing. Epidemiological transition in morbidity and mortality structure is probably the most notable common challenge. Burden of infectious diseases, nutritional disorders, and traumatism is gradually being replaced by chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Decreasing working ability, absenteeism, and premature mortality is imposed by NCDs to the working populations. The national health systems face a double burden from these dual long-term trends. During the Coronavirus Pandemic - related events all of these bottle neck inefficiencies of these health systems are likely to become even much more strangled and put to the test. Macroeconomic global crisis appears to be triggered by governmental sanitary measures and long halt in worldwide trade and all major traffic routes. Thus the months ahead of us will expose an array of crucial vulnerabilities that health systems expose once they are put to the limits of their endurance. So with launching this Research Topic we want to attract attention of policy makers and health authorities across the Globe on these newly occurred circumstances. The purpose of acquiring such knowledge is to better overcome the obstacles in provision and financing of health care created after the sunset of this unique epidemiological event. We welcome all sorts of the authors' contributions alongside an array of Frontiers article types fully focusing or partially overlapping with a landscape of aforementioned challenges.

Keywords: Emerging Markets, BRICS, EM7, Coronavirus, Economic Crisis, Recession, Pharmaceutical Markets, Brazil, Russia, India, China, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey, LMICs, Big Pharma

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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