Module 03: Health Policy in Saudi Arabia - Economics and Finance

This discussion post addresses the challenges of health policy development and financing in Saudi Arabia, considering both market and non-market solutions. The assignment explores the budget issues, implementation challenges, and the role of incentives in healthcare policy. It analyzes the need for increased pharmaceutical manufacturing within the Kingdom, highlighting the importance of local production to reduce costs and promote economic growth. The post examines the Saudi Food and Drug Authority's efforts to prevent counterfeit medications and discusses how pharmaceutical companies' research and development decisions are influenced by funding and potential returns on investment. The analysis emphasizes the need for Saudi Arabia to produce its own medicines through research and development to lower costs and improve overall healthcare efficiency. The assignment references various studies related to the topic.

ECONOMICS

Framing up of the policies and implementing them in the most effective and relevant manner
are two different things and each of the actions requires some specific considerations. The
considerations requires to be accurate in nature as that decides the productive capacity of the
policies. The framing up of the policies comes up with the issues of funding, implementation,
follow up, time and resources that needs to build up a productive and effective policies.
These issues are quite common among all the policy making institutions and thus, it could be
met or mitigated through the consideration of the market as well as non-market solutions.
Saudi Arabia has also been among the countries which faces the issues in the policy making
and it requires some specific considerations in case of the medical or health policies (Khan et
al. 2016). The primary issue that the country’s face in the policy making is the budget issue
and the implementation issues. The solution to the budget issues of the policy making could
be met though the push and the pull incentives which has been the two most active and
effective tools of the government. The pull incentive is a consumer funded operation while
the push incentive is the government funded. The two aspects of the incentives are quite
productive in nature (Alrasheedy et al. 2017). The market solutions has been of two types
while that of non-marketing solutions includes the governments, philanthropic organisations,
communities, and the society as a whole. The solutions takes the market forces as the reason
for neglecting some of the diseases.
On exploring the Kingdom it has been acknowledged that the Kingdom’s fastest growing
industry has been the pharmaceutical industry which has been providing some productive
results to the economy too. The Saudi Food and Drug Authority has been requiring the
pharmaceutical companies to prevent the counterfeit medications. This has been obligating
the companies to include a barcode on their packaging and pamphlet inside the products. The
manufacturing of the pharmaceuticals must be done in the kingdom as this would help in the
reduction of the cost and a benefit would be experienced in terms of the overall funding. The
funding would provide the industry with new opportunities and the circulation of the money
and products would be enhanced within the Kingdom which would provide a positive aspect
to the economy (Alruthia et al. 2018). As the pharmaceutical companies has been observed to
make the research and development choices on the basis of what research would be funded
since they will be doing the work and taking the risk to develop the medications. The
compensation for this risk is done through charging sufficiently high prices to both the
governments and to the patients in order to make a cover or a return to their investments and
their profits (AlKhamees et al. 2018). The additional charges adds onto the cost of the

production and thus, the Kingdom should produce the medicines itself through research and
developments.

References
AlKhamees, O. A., AlNemer, K. A., Maneea, M. W. B., AlSugair, F. A., AlEnizi, B. H., &
Alharf, A. A. (2018). Top 10 most used drugs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 2010–
2015. Saudi Pharmaceutical Journal, 26(2), 211-216.
Alrasheedy, A. A., Hassali, M. A., Wong, Z. Y., Aljadhey, H., AL-Tamimi, S. K., & Saleem,
F. (2017). Pharmaceutical policy in Saudi Arabia. In Pharmaceutical Policy in
Countries with Developing Healthcare Systems (pp. 329-347). Adis, Cham.
Alruthia, Y. S., Alwhaibi, M., Alotaibi, M. F., Asiri, S. A., Alghamdi, B. M., Almuaythir, G.
S., ... & Almeshal, M. (2018). Drug shortages in Saudi Arabia: Root causes and
recommendations. Saudi Pharmaceutical Journal, 26(7), 947-951.
Khan, T. M., Emeka, P., Suleiman, A. K., Alnutafy, F. S., & Aljadhey, H. (2016).
Pharmaceutical pricing policies and procedures in Saudi Arabia: a narrative
review. Therapeutic innovation & regulatory science, 50(2), 236-240.