Availability, price, and affordability of WHO priority maternal and child health medicine in public health facilities of
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Availability, price, and affordability of WHO priority maternal and child health medicine in public health facilities of Dessie, northEast Ethiopia Abel Demerew Hailu1*
and Solomon Ahmed Mohammed2
Abstract Background: Access to health care is a fundamental human right, and the provision of affordable, high-quality, and appropriate medicines for maternal and child health is a vital component of a well-functioning health system. The study assessed the availability, price, and affordability of WHO priority maternal and child medicines in public health facilities, Dessie, North-East Ethiopia. Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study design was conducted in Dessie town from November 2018 to February 2019. A standard checklist adapted from the Logistics Indicator Assessment Tool and WHO/HAI was used to collecting data on the availability, affordability, and price of 45 priority life-saving medicines from eight public health centers and two public hospitals. Descriptive statistics (percent and median) were computed for availability and prices. Affordability was reported in terms of the daily wage of the lowest-paid unskilled government worker. Results: Twenty-two medicines were not found at all in public health facilities. The overall availability of WHO priority maternal and child medicines was 34.02%. The mean number of stock-outs was 3.9, and the mean number was 128.9 days. The mean average point availability was 33.5%, and 7 medicines stock out on the days of assessment. From WHO priority maternal and child medicines, 4 (40%) of the products were unaffordable and 5 (55.5%) had higher prices than international prices. Ceftriaxone 1 g, ceftriaxone 500 mg, and hydralazine 20 mg injection required wages of 6.58, 8.01, and 5.02 to cover specific maternal health problems respectively. The median price ratio of priority lifesaving maternal and child medicines in public health facilities ranged from 0.65 to 3.19. Conclusions: The average mean period and point mean availability was very low. The available products were encountered with a high number of stock-outs and unaffordable. The strict control of inventory is recommended to have a steady supply of these essential medicines and improve the quality of health services. Keywords: Availability, Affordability, Price, Medicines, Maternal, And child
* Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Pharmacy, Dessie Health Science College, Dessie, Ethiopia Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherw
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