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Abstract
Objective To identify the availability, prices and affordability of essential medicines for children (cEMs) in Hanam province, Vietnam.
Design Cross-sectional study.
Setting One city and five districts of Hanam province.
Participants 66 public health facilities and 66 private drugstores.
Primary and secondary outcome measures The standardised methodology of the WHO and Health Action International was used to investigate 30 paediatric essential medicines. For each medicine, data were collected for two products: the lowest-priced medicine (LPM) and the highest-priced medicine (HPM). The availability of medicine was computed as the percentage of facilities in which this medicine was found on the day of data collection. Median prices of individual medicines were reported in local currency. Affordability was calculated as the number of days’ wages required for the lowest-paid unskilled government worker to purchase standard treatments for common diseases. Data were analysed using R software V.4.1.0.
Results The mean availability of LPMs in the private sector (33.2%, SD=38.0%) was higher than that in the public sector (24.9%, SD=39.4%) (p<0.05). The mean availability of HPMs was extremely low in both sectors (11.3% and 5.8%, respectively). The mean availability of cEMs in urban areas was significantly higher than that in rural areas (36.5% and 31.6%, respectively, p<0.05). In the public sector, the prices of LPMs were nearly equal to the international reference prices (IRPs). In the private sector, LPMs were generally sold at 4.06 times their IRPs. However, in both sectors, the affordability of LPMs was reasonable for most conditions as standard treatments only cost a day’s wage or less.
Conclusion The low availability was the main reason hindering access to cEMs in Hanam, especially in the countryside. A national study on cEMs should be conducted, and some practical policies should be promulgated to enhance access to cEMs.
- health policy
- paediatrics
- quality in health care
Data availability statement
Data are available on reasonable request. Please contact the corresponding author (dinhxuandai.224@gmail.com) if you are interested in accessing data from our research.
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
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Data availability statement
Data are available on reasonable request. Please contact the corresponding author (dinhxuandai.224@gmail.com) if you are interested in accessing data from our research.
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Footnotes
Contributors DXD: conceptualisation, methodology, software, formal analysis, investigation, data curation, visualisation, writing-original draft preparation, writing-review and editing. HTTN: conceptualisation, methodology, supervision, validation, writing-review and editing. VMN: conceptualisation, methodology, investigation, project administration, writing-review and editing.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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