RICHER countries pay less for their medicines in real terms, once the purchasing power of different currencies is taken into account, according to an international study.
Researchers from the US and UK looked at the availability and prices of over 500 essential medicines across 87 countries, and found that their prices were highest, on average, in the Americas and lowest in the Western Pacific – including Australia and NZ – after accounting for the purchasing power of different currencies.
This list included both newer, patent-protected medicines and older medicines available as generics.
The research did not include medicines used to treat HIV, tuberculosis or malaria, as these were often obtained outside the normal commercial channels whose data was used for the comparison, nor did it include vaccines.
Overall, they found that the higher a country’s gross domestic product per capita, the higher the cost of drugs when converted from the local currency to US dollars, indicating that richer countries generally had higher drug prices.
However, when adjusting for the purchasing power of different currencies, an inverse correlation was found, suggesting that richer countries had lower prices in real terms.
Bucking this trend was the US, which had prices around three times higher than the basis country Germany (after taking purchased power into account), while the relatively poor Lebanon had the lowest real costs at 18% of those in Germany.
The highest unadjusted prices were found in the US, where costs were 4.1 times higher than Germany, but after taking purchasing power into account, Argentinians faced the highest costs at 5.8 times higher than Germany.
Other countries with high costs included Mexico (4.3 times higher than Germany), Dominican Republic (4.1), Thailand (4), and Indonesia (3.9).
Pakistan had the lowest prices in nominal terms, at 30% of those in Germany, but prices were closer to those in Germany after adjusting for purchasing power (97.6%).
Australia had the second lowest costs of all countries looked at, with adjusted costs 53% of those in Germany.
In a separate analysis, the researchers took a subset of eight essential medicines used to treat major causes of death and disability globally, and calculated how many days of minimum wage earnings would be required to pay for one month of treatment.
Again, they found that those in richer countries tended to require fewer working days to pay for them.
Nor did it consider varying levels of affordability within countries.
“Many low- and middle-income countries paid higher prices for the same essential medicines compared to wealthier countries, placing a disproportionate cost burden on patients in poorer nations,” the authors concluded.
“There is a need for international strategies aimed at achieving more equitable outcomes,” they suggested.
Read the paper HERE. KB
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