Effective medicines exist to treat or alleviate many diseases which predominate in the developing world and cause high mortality and morbidity rates. Price should not be an obstacle preventing access to these medicines. Increasingly, drug donations have been established by drug companies, but these are often limited in time, place or use. Measures exist which are more sustainable and will have ...

BACKGROUND Medicines play an important role in healthcare, but prices can be a barrier to patient care. Few studies have looked at the prices of essential medicines in low- and middle-income countries in terms of patient affordability. AIM To determine the prices, availability and affordability of medicines along the supply chain in Swaziland. SETTING Private- and public-sector facilities i...

BACKGROUND The successful control of cardiovascular diseases at the lowest possible cost requires the use of the most effective and affordable medicines. We aimed to describe the trends in the ambulatory use of medicines for prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases [Anatomic Therapeutic Chemical classification system (ATC): C and B01A] in Portugal, between 2004 and 2012, and to estim...

Both proprietary and nonproprietary medicines are expected to undergo rigorous preapproval testing and both should meet stringent health authority regulatory requirements related to quality to obtain approval. Nonproprietary (also known as copy, or generic) medicines, which base their authorization and use on the proprietary documentation and label, are often viewed as a means to help lower the...

INTRODUCTION Patients' perceptions of side effect risks are important influences on their medicine-taking behaviour. A previous survey of Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) showed considerable variation in the terms used to communicate risks. OBJECTIVE Our objective was to assess the methods used to describe risk of side effects in recent PILs and to compare them with PILs sampled in 2006. ...

background and objectives: the expanding field of psychopharmacology is constantly seeking new and improved drugs to treat psychiatric disorders. although psychotropic drugs have had a remarkable impact in psychiatry, their utilization, effectiveness, and side effects in the in clinical practice need continuous study. the present study was thus designed to analyze the pattern of psychotropic dr...

Millions of people lack access to affordable medicines. The intellectual property rules in the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) provide pharmaceutical companies with monopoly protections that allow them to market some drugs without competition by less costly generics. We examined availability of certain drugs in Guatemala and found that CAFTA intellectual property rules reduced acce...