Quantifying the impoverishing effects of purchasing medicines: A cross-country comparison of the affordability of medicines in the developing world

PLoS Medicine

Volumn 7, Issue 8, 2010, Pages

  Niëns, Laurens M ^a   Cameron, Alexandra ^b   van de Poel, Ellen ^a   Ewen, Margaret ^c   Brouwer, Werner B F ^a   Laing, Richard ^b  

^a ERASMUS UNIVERSITY ROTTERDAM   (Netherlands)

^b WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION   (Switzerland)

^c Vancouver BC   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AMOXICILLIN; ATENOLOL; GENERIC DRUG; GLIBENCLAMIDE; SALBUTAMOL;

ARTICLE; ASTHMA; COMPARATIVE STUDY; CONTROLLED STUDY; COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS; DEVELOPING COUNTRY; DIABETES MELLITUS; DRUG COST; DRUG MARKETING; DRUG QUALITY; HEALTH CARE SURVEY; HEALTH INSURANCE; HOUSEHOLD; HUMAN; HYPERTENSION; LOWEST INCOME GROUP; MAJOR CLINICAL STUDY; METHODOLOGY; PHILIPPINES; POVERTY; PREVALENCE; PURCHASING; QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS; RESPIRATORY TRACT INFECTION;

CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON; DEVELOPING COUNTRIES; DRUGS, ESSENTIAL; FEES, PHARMACEUTICAL; HEALTH SERVICES ACCESSIBILITY; HUMANS; POVERTY; UNITED NATIONS; WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION;

EID: 77956792344     PISSN: 15491277     EISSN: 15491676     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000333     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. World Health Organization (2000) Global comparative pharmaceutical expenditures with related reference information. Health Economics and Drugs EDM Series No. 3. Geneva: World Health Organization.
2. World Health Organization (2004) WHO medicines strategy 2004-2007 -countries at the core. Available: http://www.who.int/medicinedocs/collect/medicinedocs/pdf/s5416e/s5416e.pdf Accessed 28 April 2009.
3. van Doorslaer E, O'Donnell O, Rannan-Eliya RP, Somanathan A, Adhikari SR, et al. (2006) Effect of payments for health care on poverty estimates in 11 countries in Asia: an analysis of household survey data. Lancet 368: 1357-1364.
4. Cameron A, Ewen M, Ross-Degnan D, Ball D, Laing R (2009) Medicine prices, availability, and affordability in 36 developing and middle-income countries: a secondary analysis. Lancet 373: 240-249.
5. Dror DM, Preker AS, Jakab M (2002) The role of communities in combating social exclusion. Dror DM, Preker AS, eds. Social reinsurance - a new approach to sustainable community health financing. Washington (D.C.); Geneva: The World Bank Group and the International Labour Office.
6. World Health Organization (2008) Access to medicines. Available: http://www.who.int/trade/glossary/story002/en/ Accessed 22 April 2009.
7. United Nations (1948) The universal declaration of human rights, article 25. Available: http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html#a25. Accessed 22 April 2009.
8. United Nations (1966) International covenant on economic, social and cultural rights, article 12. Geneva. Available: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/a_cescr.htm. Accessed 22 April 2009.
9. World Health Organization, Health Action International (2008) Measuring medicine prices, availability, affordability and price components - 2nd edition. Geneva: World Health Organization.
10. Niëns LM, Brouwer WB (2009) Better measures of affordability required. Lancet 373: 1081. author reply 1081-1082.
11. Niëns LM, Van de Poel E, Cameron A, Ewen M, Laing R, et al. (2009) Practical measurement of affordability: an application to medicines. Rotterdam: Institute of Health Policy and Management, Erasmus University, Working Paper W2009.02.
12. Hancock KE (1993) 'Can pay? won't pay?' or economic principles of 'Affordability'. Urban Stud 30: 127-145.
13. Kutty NK (2005) A new measure of housing affordability: estimates and analytical results. Hous Policy Debate 16: 113-142.
14. Bundorf MK, Pauly MV (2006) Is health insurance affordable for the uninsured? J Health Econ 25: 650-673.
15. Chen S, Ravallion M (2008) The developing world is poorer than we thought, but no less successful in the fight against poverty. Washington (D.C.): Development Research Group, The World Bank Group.
16. The World Bank Group. Available: http://go.worldbank.org/C9GR27WRJ0. Accessed 10 January 2010.
17. Health Action International. Medicine prices. Available: http://www.haiweb.org/medicineprices/. Accessed 5 March 2009.
18. The World Bank Group. World development indicators. Available: http://publications.worldbank.org/WDI/. Accessed 12 March 2009.
19. O'Donnell O, van Doorslaer E, Wagstaff A, Lindelow M (2008) Analyzing health equity using household survey data - A guide to techniques and their implementation. Washington (D.C.): The World Bank Group.
20. The Economist. The economist intelligence unit. Available: http://www.eiu.com/. Accessed 2 April 2009.
21. The World Bank Group. Country groups. Available: http://go.worldbank.org/D7SN0B8YU0. Accessed 16 March 2009.
22. Flores G, Krishnakumar J, O'Donnell O, van Doorslaer E (2008) Coping with health-care costs: implications for the measurement of catastrophic expenditures and poverty. Health Econ 17: 1393-1412.
23. World Health Organization (2008) WHO model formulary. Available: http://www.who.int/selection_medicines/list/WMF2008.pdf. Accessed 27 August 2009.
24. United Nations Development Program (2008) Human development report 2007/ 2008. Available: http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_20072008_Tables.pdf. Accessed 19 February 2009.
25. Lipton M, Ravaillon M (1994) Povert and policy. Behrman J, Srinivasan TN, eds. Handbook of development economics. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
26. World Health Organization (2004) Global burden of disease - 2004 update. Available: http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/2004_report_update/en/index.html. Accessed 12 February 2010.
27. Waning B, Kaplan W, King AC, Lawrence DA, Leufkens HG (2009) Global strategies to reduce the price of antiretroviral medicines: evidence from transactional databases. Bull World Health Organ 87: 520.
28. World Health Organization (2006) Public health innovation and intellectual property rights. Report of the commission on intellectual property rights, innovation, and public health. Geneva: World Health Organization.
29. Seim L (2007) Thailand: government issues compulsory licences for HIV/AIDS drugs. HIV AIDS Policy Law Rev 12: 28-29.
30. Ford N, Wilson D, Costa Chaves G, Lotrowska M, Kijtiwatchakul K (2007) Sustaining access to antiretroviral therapy in the less-developed world: lessons from brazil and Thailand. AIDS (London) 21: S21-S29.