Time and cost involved in measuring access to medicines: the case of Albania

This study aimed to assess the resources involved in collecting data for both the WHO/Health Action International (HAI) methodology and the Sustainable Development Goal 3.b.3 indicator to determine the availability and affordability of medicines. Medicines from the WHO Global Core List (GCL) and a basket of pediatric medicines were chosen to reflect a comprehensive range of medicines. The objective was to analyze the time, financial, and human resource investments required to conduct such research in an upper-middle-income country like Albania.

Data collection, including travel required approximately 3.5 h per survey area, with a total of 36 h estimated across six areas, not including data analysis. Each survey area was visited by four data collectors. Although collecting this type of data was initially perceived as laborious, our findings revealed that this was primarily due to the pre-survey preparation rather than the data collection process itself. Transportation costs were calculated by including car rental and fuel costs and totaled 120 euro. This exploratory assessment offers valuable insights into the practical challenges of evaluating access to medicines, which can help improve data collection strategies and inform evidence-based policy development to enhance medicine availability and affordability in the future.