A study of prices affordability and availability of essential medicines in the state of Punjab

Abstract

This study has evaluated the prices, affordability and availability of essential medicines in the state of Punjab. The extent of out-of-pocket catastrophic expenses on medicines and healthcare has also been analyzed. The prices, affordability and availability of essential medicines are measured by the survey methodology given by the World Health Organization Health Action International (WHO-HAI). The study is based on primary data collected from six districts of Punjab. The medicines price analysis indicated that the overall medicine prices were reasonable in the state of Punjab. Only 19 and 3% of Most Sold Branded medicines (MSBs) and Lowest priced Generics (LPGs) medicines have excessive local prices, respectively. The average availability of medicines was suboptimal (below 40%) in all the sectors. Only a few (12 and 6) medicines have optimal availability i.e. they were more than 80% available in the public sector and as MSB. The average availability of different item groups such as injections, I.V. Fluids, tablets, etc was not optimal across sectors. On an average, the survey respondents were spending 11.8 and 17.8% of their household resources on purchasing medicines and health care, respectively. According to the total monthly expenditure approach, a large proportion (41 and 46.5%) of households were experiencing catastrophic medicine and health expenditure and they have spent around 23.39 and 34.20% of their resources on medicines and health care, respectively. According to the Non food expenditure approach, for 17.3 and 30.2% of households, medicines and health care expenses were unaffordable. According to the WHO-HAI methodology, the majority of the medicines (MSB, LPGs and medicines bought from Jan Aushadhi Kendras) were affordable (cost less than one days wage) for the target group. newline