Pharmacy on a Bicycle: Innovative Solutions for Global Health and Poverty

Every four minutes, over 50 children under the age of five die. In the same four minutes, 2 mothers lose their lives in childbirth. Every year, malaria kills nearly 1.2 million people, despite the fact that it can be prevented with a mosquito net and treated for less than $1.50.

Sadly, this list goes on and on. Millions are dying from diseases that we can easily and inexpensively prevent, diagnose, and treat. Why? Because even though we know exactly what people need, we just can’t get it to them. They are dying not because we can’t solve a medical problem but because we can’t solve a logistics problem.

In this profoundly important book, Eric G. Bing and Marc J. Epstein lay out a solution: a new kind of bottom-up health care that is delivered at the source. We need microclinics, micropharmacies, and microentrepreneurs located in the remote, hard-to-reach communities they serve. By building a new model that “scales down” to train and incentivize all kinds of health-care providers in their own villages and towns, we can create an army of on-site professionals who can prevent tragedy at a fraction of the cost of top-down bureaucratic programs.

Bing and Epstein have seen the model work, and they provide example after example of the extraordinary results it has achieved in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This is a book about taking health care the last mile—sometimes literally—to prevent widespread, unnecessary, and easily avoided death and suffering. Pharmacy on a Bicycle shows how the same forces of innovation and entrepreneurship that work in first-world business cultures can be unleashed to save the lives of millions.

Eric G. Bing, MD, PhD, MBA, is a Harvard-educated physician who has created and managed innovative health programs throughout Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America for over two decades. He is a senior fellow and the director for global health at the George W. Bush Institute and professor of global health at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
Marc J. Epstein is a distinguished research professor of management at Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. Previously a professor at Harvard and Stanford, Dr. Epstein is the author of many books and articles on innovative approaches to improving businesses and nonprofit organizations. He works in Asia, Latin America, and Africa and trains students in entrepreneurial solutions to global health and poverty.