The Study of Availability, Affordability and Price Variation of Essential Antibiotics in Bangladesh
Md. Aknur Rahman1
, Sauda Sumaya Dina2, Md. Monirul Islam3, Jakir Ahmed Chowdhury4, Shaila Kabir1, Abu Asad Choudhury1 and Md. Shah Amran1*1Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Dhaka, Shahbag, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh
2Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Dhaka, Shahbag, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh
3Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacology, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Dhaka, Shahbag, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh
4Department of Pharmaceutical Technology, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Dhaka, Shahbag, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh
Corresponding Author E-mail: amranms@du.ac.bd
Abstract: The increased prices and low availability of medicines are main obstacles to health care system in developing countries like Bangladesh. The main goal of this work is to gather and assessing the data on availability, affordability and price variations of essential antibiotics in Bangladesh. The data will help to improve the availability and affordability of essential antibiotics for the mass peoples. The present work was done using standard methodology described in guideline, “Price measurement, availability and affordability and price components of medicines. A total of eighteen essential antibiotics were surveyed and their prices and availability were determined. Prices from 2003 to 2019 were collected from different sources to make a comparative study of the price variations over the years. The overall prices of essential antibiotics are not much higher than international reference prices. The rate of increase of price from previous years is not so alarming. The numbers of manufacturing companies were collected from the Bangladesh National Formulary (BDNF) of different Volumes to compare the increasing number of manufacturers. Essential antibiotics affordability was determined by comparing the total cost of treatment of a particular disease to the monthly salary of the lowest paid unskilled laborer. There are several essential antibiotics for which the numbers of manufacturing companies are increasing in very high rate. This type of survey may be expanded to the national level for the data of different regions of Bangladesh.
Keywords: Affordability, Availability, Essential Antibiotics, Median Price Ratio, Median Price and Price variations. Back to TOC