AIM Diabetes is a growing burden especially in low and middle income countries (LMICs). Inadequate access to diabetes care is of particular concern and selection of appropriate diabetes medicines on national essential medicines lists (NEMLs) is a first step in achieving adequate access. This selection was studied among LMICs and influences of various factors associated with selection decisions ...

BACKGROUND To assess progress in improving affordability of medicines since the introduction of mandatory health insurance in the Republic of Moldova. METHOD Using data from national health insurance, we estimate affordability of partially reimbursed medicines for the treatment of non-communicable diseases, and analyse which factors contributed to changes in affordability. RESULTS Affordabi...

There is increasing impetus to use pharmaceutical interventions, ie, ranibizumab or bevacizumab, for the treatment of particular macular diseases. This paper describes the evidence and decision-making of the National List of Essential Medicines Committee that recently announced the inclusion of bevacizumab for the treatment of macular diseases in its pharmaceutical benefit package. The findings...

This article describes and critically appraises clinical trials assessing misoprostol effectiveness in preventing primary postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) in home and community settings in low- and middle-income countries. Of 172 identified studies of misoprostol use in labour only six fulfilled the inclusion criteria. All trials used 600 μg misoprostol in the intervention arm; three assessed misop...

In The Lancet today, Alexandra Cameron and colleagues report on the price, availability, and relative aff ordability of a series of essential medicines in the six WHO administrative regions, in a secondary analysis of data collected in WHO/Health Action International (HAI) surveys. This new report builds on their previous work outlining drug prices in the WHO/HAI database and their relation to ...

Background Hypertension is the most prevalent cardiovascular disease in Zimbabwe. The prevalence of Hypertension in the country is above 30% regardless of the cut off used. Currently, majority of patients in Zimbabwe seek health care from the private sector due to limited government funding for the public health sector. However, Standard treatment guidelines for hypertension are only available ...