A Dissertation Submitted to Dar es Salaam Campus College in the Partial Fulfilment for the Award of Master Degree of Business Administration (MBA) in Mzumbe University
Limited access to essential drugs undermines the health systems, efficiency and health development in many developing countries including Tanzania. The major factor associated with limited drug accesses is the high price of medicines. The ability of local pharmaceutical industries to manufacture essential drugs is an important contributor in facilitating access and affordability of medicines. Currently, Tanzania’s local manufacturers can only meet 30% of the country’s need of essential medicines despite having eight pharmaceutical manufacture ring companies.
Semi structured questionnaires were issued to Chief Executive Officers/General Managers from the manufacturing pharmaceutical companies available in Tanzania as a method of primary data collection, secondary sources were also used. Data obtained were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Scientist (SPSS) and presented in form of tables, construct graphs, pie chart and histograms.
The challenges identified by Tanzanian manufacturers were comparable to the findings of studies conducted in other developing countries. What was unique in this study was that higher operating cost and shortage of capital were among the challenges that manufacturers perceived as hindering increased capacity. In addition, poor government support was also a challenge. These challenges hindered increased production of essential drugs.
Linkage with other partners and the information sharing among manufacturers are the opportunities that local manufacturers enjoy. Export was found not to be very important opportunities that local pharmaceutical manufacturers exploit and the level of competition between local and foreign pharmaceutical manufacturers was found to be high.
To increase capacity of local manufacturers a multi-sectorial approach is needed to address the above identified constraints. A concentrated effort therefore should be put in by both parties i.e. the government and local manufacturers for Tanzania to become self-sufficient in terms of the manufacturing of essential drugs.