The 4As+1: A Guiding Framework

This tool has been developed to help practitioners analyze low-income markets, create a value proposition that meets low-income patients’ needs, and identify potential partners to deliver it.

The tool is structured along 4 As:

Acceptance: To what extent do patients accept medicines, treatment regimens, and health care providers?
Awareness: How aware is the population of health-related issues (i.e., symptoms, quality of medicines, and health care providers)?
Availability: How readily available are medicines, health infrastructures, and health care providers to local populations?
Affordability: Can patients, health care providers, pharmacists, and institutional payers afford and finance medicines and health services?

To provide these 4As, Pharmaceutical companies rely on another A:
a variety of actors that form the health ecosystem to ensure that the correct high-quality product reaches those in need in an appropriate and effective way.