High prices restrict access to drugs in low-income countries

Thursday 4 December 2008
Maria Bailey - Reporter

The availability of essential medicines for public healthcare in low-income countries is very limited and patients have to buy drugs in the private sector at far higher prices, despite such countries'pharma spending accounting for 20–60% of healthcare budgets.

This percentage compares with 18% of healthcare budgets being spent on pharmaceuticals in countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and governments of low-income countries must do more to improve this situation and make national healthcare systems more efficient, says a recent analysis conducted by the World Health Organization and Health Action International in 36 countries, and published in The Lancet.

The countries surveyed were Armenia, Brazil, Cameroon, Chad, China, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Fiji, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mali, Mongolia, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

The authors of the report compared the prices of 15 generic medicines. They were the anti-asthmatics salbutamol and beclometasone; antihypertensives captopril, hydrochlorothiazide and atenolol; antibacterials ciprofloxacin, amoxicillin, ceftriaxone and co-trimoxazole; CNS products amitriptyline and fluoxetine; gastro-intestinals omeprazole and ranitidine; the antiviral aciclovir; and the antidiabetic glibenclamide.

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