Medicine Pricing and Financing

Medicine Pricing: The program provides information on procurement prices of essential medicines collected from public procurement agencies and international suppliers of generic medicines. A more user friendly system to capture tender prices from public procurement agencies is under development. Using the WHO and Health Action International standard survey methodology, (http://www.who.int/medicines/areas/access/OMS_Medicine_prices.pdf) to-date 17 countries have undertaken surveys on medicine prices, availability and affordability of treatments for selected diseases. Survey reports can be downloaded from http://www.afro.who.int/en/divisions-a-programmes/dsd/essential-medicines/edm-publications.html and detailed information on medicine prices is available at http://www.haiweb.org. In addition, supplementary studies on medicine price components were carried out in Kenya, Ghana, Mauritius and Uganda. Some countries such as Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania regularly monitor prices and availability of key essential medicines. Essential medicines in public health facilities are not regularly available and people are obliged to pay higher prices for their medicines out of pocket from the private sector. Medicine prices vary within and across countries and are unaffordable especially in the private sector. The need for policy guidelines and options for countries to improve affordability and availability of essential medicines remains one of the priority areas.

Financing of medicines: Public sector per capita expenditure for medicines in many countries of the Region remains below US$ 2 and is far from adequate. In view of improving the availability and affordability of essential medicines, strengthening and exploring alternative medicines financing mechanism has been given paramount importance. The program works with the World Health Organization/Pan American Health Organization Collaborating Center in Pharmaceutical Policy (http://www.whoccpp.org/) to develop appropriate tools; carry out household surveys and analysis of data on access and use of medicines. Pilot household surveys were carried out in Gambia, Kenya and Uganda. Preliminary assessments were undertaken in 5 countries to explore potential areas of technical support to strengthen capacities of national health insurance schemes and expand the coverage of essential medicines. The first African course on pharmaceutical policy analysis and health insurance was held in 2008.

The development and implementation of appropriate policies and strategies including regulating medicine prices and expanding coverage of essential medicines under health insurance schemes are given due emphasis.