Improving availability and affordability of plasma-derived medicines.

Plasma contains several therapeutically important proteins. Currently more than 25 of them are commercially available to treat life-threatening diseases. Some of these medicines already included in the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines indicating their importance from a global perspective. However, unfortunately due to very high cost of treatment with plasma-derived medicines, these clinically precious tools are not affordable for a majority of the patients living in developing countries. There are some options available for securing accessibility to these medicines. These include local production, importation and contract fractionation of locally produced plasma. Although local production of plasma-derived medicines and/or importation of these medicines might be a practical approach to respond to the needs for these medicines, in recent years several countries have used contract fractionation of locally produced plasma as a very effective approach for improving availability and affordability of plasma-derived medicines in their national market. Copyright 2009 The International Association for Biologicals. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.