Tracking research to policy and implementation in the pharmaceutical sector in Bangladesh

SOAS-ACE research has provided an analysis of corruption and recommended strategies for addressing pharmaceutical sector overpricing and on health workers’ absenteeism. This research had been adopted by a multi-partner coalition pushing for health sector anti-corruption in Bangladesh.

Now, as the coalition engages with the drugs regulator, doctors and other stakeholders involved in the implementation of the strategies, we will track this process. We will record the ups and downs of this attempt to convert research into practice.
Our research identifies interventions that are potentially feasible, in the sense that major resistance from the actors can be neutralized and horizontal checks will enable day to day implementation. But that still requires a process for passing the laws and ordinances and making sure the low-level bureaucratic and other obstacles for rolling out the new rules are overcome. Our work will therefore also provide valuable insights into the implementation challenges at the final stages of taking a research idea that is implementable in terms of being effective anti-corruption to implementation as understood as the process of changing rules and ordinances through a bureaucratic and political process.

This is a rare opportunity to participate in and record how our research ideas get converted into policies and are implemented, the challenges faced, and the broader learnings for taking policy ideas into practice.

SOAS-ACE is currently undertaking research in Bangladesh and Nigeria, including in the education, health and power sectors, as well as on successful collective action that overthrew a corrupt autocracy. Moving beyond pure research, we are also monitoring the implementation of anti-corruption strategies our research has recommended, such as a strategy to reduce pharmaceutical companies’ overpricing of medicines.

This implementation strategy is led by Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), with the participation of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) on the absenteeism project. USAID was leading on the pharmaceuticals pricing work.