Measuring medicine prices, availability, affordability and price components, 2nd edition
Overview
Access to essential medicines is part of the fulfilment of the right to the highest attainable standard of health (in short: the right to health). So why do millions of people across the globe go without the treatments they need? The reasons are now becoming clearer – and the price and availability of medicines to those who need them are crucial factors. Prices for poor people are simply too high and products are often not available.
This may not be news to the sick and poor, but it has been news for those whose responsibility it is to ensure the health of citizens. In 2001, the World Health Assembly passed resolution 54.11 which requested the Director-General “to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of implementing, in collaboration with nongovernmental organizations and other concerned partners, systems for voluntary monitoring drug prices and reporting global drug prices with a view to improving equity in access to essential drugs in health systems, and to provide support to Member States in that regard.”
The first edition of Medicine prices – a new approach to measurement was published in 2003 as a working draft for field-testing and subsequent revision. Since then, more than 50 medicine price and availability surveys have been conducted in all regions of the world, using the recommended standard method. The results have exposed many problems of poor access to medicines, for example, people having to work 15 days or more to afford one month’s treatment for a chronic disease; important medicines simply not being available locally to patients; governments not passing on low procurement prices to their citizens; excessive mark-ups in the private sector, and taxes and duties being applied to essential medicines. From the evidence that has resulted from use of the WHO/HAI survey tool, medicine affordability and availability issues show no boundaries. Crucially, it is the poor who are really paying the price – both economically and with their health.