Brazil Germany Pharma Industry Comparison Essay

THE   PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY

- A MARKET COMPARISON BETWEEN BRAZIL AND GERMANY

                                      BRAZILIAN ECONOMY
                                 

SEPTEMBER 2011

INDEX

INTRODUCTION 0

1. HISTORY 1

2. ECONOMIC IMPACT AND INDUSTRY STRUCTURE 4

3. PATENTS, R&D & GENERICS 9

3.2 Legal environment:   protection of intellectual property 10

3.4 Generics within the Pharmaceutical Industry 15

4. HEALTH CARE SYSTEM 18

5.2 Financing 21

5.3 Expenditure on medicine 22

5.3 Public policies in medicine distribution 25

5. DEMAND AND SOCIAL TRENDS 26

5.1 Overview 26

4.2 Diseases 27

4.3 Demographics 28

4.4 Social Developments 30

CONCLUSION 32

REFERENCES 33

INTRODUCTION

Currently the pharmaceutical industry faces many challenges. Besides the international competition and the ever reducing lifecycles of innovation, this market has an enormous importance and responsibility concerning social health and wealth. As living standards across the globe are rising, health and healthcare have become an increasing focus of governments and population. In addition, pharmaceutical industries have long been strong drivers of economic growth.
The focus of this paper is to analyze this particular industry from an economic point of view in two different countries, Brazil and Germany. Because the two countries are so different, a side-by-side analysis provides a deep insight on the inner workings of the pharmaceutical industry in general. To undertake this comparison, we have decided to focus on various aspects that define the industry and analyze them in depth: history, industry structure, market characteristics, legislation and regulation and healthcare systems, as these factors are the major drivers concerning the economic impact.
The structure of the paper is as follows. First, we will provide background on the history of the pharmaceutical industries of each country. Then the industry structure and its...