Indonesia’s health ministry has opened a new pathway that allows pharmaceutical companies, academics and patient groups to initiate health technology assessments, breaking the government’s previous monopoly on the process. The mechanism, known as PTK Mandiri, is designed to cut waiting times for new medical devices and treatments. A defined submission window runs from 9 to 16 July 2026, with full evaluation dossiers due by 24 August, all processed through a dedicated online portal. Officials in Jakarta insist the accelerated timeline will not weaken the rigour or independence of the reviews.

The move reflects a wider re-engineering of access policies across middle-income economies. In Iran, where exchange-rate liberalisation has put pressure on household budgets, the government is deploying a demand-side instrument: a monthly electronic food credit, or kala-berg, worth one million tomans per person. The credit, which covers 11 staple goods from meat to fruit, is distributed in three tranches each month according to the final digit of the household head’s national ID. The last group for July—those with digits 7, 8 and 9—receives its allocation on 16 July, with the credit valid until the end of August. Simultaneously, Iran’s agriculture ministry is pushing structural reforms, including contract farming and a centralised market supervision body, to lower food prices over the longer term.

In East Africa, Kenya is addressing gaps in both assistive technology and pharmaceutical regulation. The health ministry has begun building a government-led wheelchair service to meet an estimated unmet need of 550,000 units, combining local manufacturing incentives, tax relief on components and the training of 218 rehabilitation professionals. On the medicines front, Nairobi has halted unregulated parallel importation, a decision that policy observers say is essential to ensure traceability and quality. The pharmacy board is pursuing WHO Maturity Level 3 and preparing to roll out serialisation and track-and-trace systems. In southern India, Telangana state is planning to merge its food safety and drugs control departments into a single enforcement agency, a step officials say will accelerate inspections, sample testing and legal action against adulterated food and counterfeit medicines.

The coming weeks will test these frameworks. Indonesia’s HTA portal will accept the first round of independent submissions through mid-July, with final assessments due in late August. Iran’s kala-berg credit remains active until the end of August, while the agriculture ministry’s market supervision restructuring awaits formal decree. Kenya’s wheelchair programme will expand through county-level distribution, and Telangana’s health minister has ordered an action plan for the departmental merger. Each initiative, though sector-specific, shares a common architecture: using regulatory reform and targeted subsidies to make essential goods and services more swiftly and safely available.