Time to embrace access programmes for medicines: Lessons from the South African flucytosine access programme.

•Market failure has meant that flucytosine, a potentially lifesaving medicine for the treatment of cryptococcal meningitis, is not accessible in African treatment programmes.•A recently established access programme has allowed wide scale public sector access to flucytosine in South Africa.•We advocate that access programmes for medicines be utilized more widely as part of the solution to addressing market failure.