Legislation an essential tool for ensuring access to medicines policy goals.

Effective national legislation is critical to support the activities of a Medicines Regulatory Authority. However, the law is an under-recognized mechanism for managing issues in the implementation of access to medicines and other medicines policy goals. Regulations are a more flexible tool, have legal effect and the advantage that they can be created or changed without the need to go to the Parliament. Closer collaboration between the health and legal sectors is important as is political commitment for enforcement of the law. Some regional case studies illustrate the opportunities to use the law as an effective tool to implement medicine policies and to meet access to medicine challenges.