Availability, pricing and affordability of selected medicines for noncommunicable diseases

The global and national burden of noncommunicable diseases continues to rise, thus making access to medicines increasingly important.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the availability, pricing, and affordability of selected medicines for noncommunicable diseases in the Islamic Republic of Iran used in 2014 based on the World Health Organization (WHO)/Health Action International (HAI) methodology.

The price and availability data for 54 selected medicines were collected from public and private retail pharmacies as well as private pharmacies located in public hospitals in six cities of the Islamic Republic of Iran on the basis of the standardized methodology developed by WHO and HAI. The outcome measures were percentage availability of medicines, ratios of medicine prices to the international reference prices, and the affordability. Affordability was defined as the number of days' wages needed by the lowest-paid unskilled government worker to afford one month of chronic treatment.

The procurement price of the surveyed Lowest Priced Generic and Most Sold Generic medicines was 1.19 times the international reference price. The patient price was not significantly different among different pharmacy retail settings compared with the international reference prices. Moreover, the overall mean availability of the surveyed Lowest Priced Generic medicines in public, private, and other settings was 75.5%, 83.3% and 80.3%, respectively. All the treatment costs for the high burden noncommunicable diseases were less than one day's wages of the lowest-paid government worker.

This study indicated that procurement prices of the surveyed medicines were reasonable in comparison with the international reference price. Moreover, the availability of generic forms of the surveyed medicines was good but originator brand medicines were significantly low in all the three settings.