Department of Clinical Pharmacy, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143-0622, USA.
Global Health. 2012 Jul 2;8:22. doi: 10.1186/1744-8603-8-22.
Several World Health Organization (WHO) initiatives aim to improve the accessibility of safe and effective medicines for children. A first step in achieving this goal is to obtain a baseline measure of access to essential medicines. The objective of this project was to measure the availability, prices, and affordability of children's medicines in Guatemala.
An adaption of the standardized methodology developed by the World Health Organization and Health Action International (HAI) was used to conduct a cross sectional survey to collect data on availability and final patient prices of medicines in public and private sector medicine outlets during April and May of 2010.
A subset of the public sector, Programa de Accesibilidad a los Medicamentos (PROAM), had the lowest average availability (25%) compared to the private sector (35%). In the private sector, highest and lowest priced medicines were 22.7 and 10.7 times more expensive than their international reference price comparison. Treatments were generally unaffordable, costing as much as 15 days wages for a course of ceftriaxone.
Analysis of the procurement, supply and distribution of specific medicines is needed to determine reasons for lack of availability. Improvements to accessibility could be made by developing an essential medicines list for children and including these medicines in national purchasing lists.
世界卫生组织(WHO)的几项举措旨在提高儿童安全有效药物的可及性。实现这一目标的第一步是对基本药物的可及性进行基线测量。本项目的目的是衡量危地马拉儿童药物的可获得性、价格和可负担性。
采用世界卫生组织和国际健康行动(HAI)制定的标准化方法进行横断面调查,以收集 2010 年 4 月至 5 月期间公共和私营部门医药销售点药品供应和最终患者价格的数据。
与私营部门(35%)相比,公共部门的一部分(PROAM)的平均可用性(25%)最低。在私营部门,价格最高和最低的药品比其国际参考价格比较贵 22.7 倍和 10.7 倍。治疗通常负担不起,一个疗程的头孢曲松的费用高达 15 天的工资。
需要对特定药物的采购、供应和分配进行分析,以确定缺乏供应的原因。通过为儿童制定基本药物清单并将这些药物纳入国家采购清单,可以提高可及性。