Negotiating authoritarian law and (dis)order: medicines, drug shops, and regulators in a poor Yangon suburb

Abstract

Global health policymakers have identified Myanmar as a source of high drug resistance and informal pharmaceutical markets in need of tighter state regulation. The World Health Organization drafted a Global Action Plan on antibiotic resistance (often referred to as antimicrobial resistance) that seeks to address it. Myanmar is one of over a hundred countries that has followed the World Health Organization’s prescription and drafted its own National Action Plan. Through participating in the everyday life of a family pharmacy, we observed that in practice the outcomes of global plans for AMR, such as regulating access to antibiotics, are shaped by people’s limited access to affordable health care, low salaries, and the military’s authoritarian role in Myanmar politics. We followed how negotiations between state officials and drug vendors evolved towards a mutual understanding (as opposed to following written rules) after a Food and Drug Administration raid, intended to enforce the regulation of the sales of illegal medicines. Rather than uncritically pushing state-centric action, those working to promote the regulation of medicines must attend more carefully to how different modes of political authority and governance, combined with histories of health provision, shape drug policy in practice. Otherwise, they risk contributing, if not intensifying, already existing health and social injustices, whilst also failing to generate their intended outcomes, such as meaningful changes to antibiotic sales and reductions in resistance.