Availability and affordability of essential medicines for diabetes across high-income, middle-income, and low-income countries: a prospective epidemiological study

Publication date: Available online 28 August 2018Source: The Lancet Diabetes & EndocrinologyAuthor(s): Clara K Chow, Chinthanie Ramasundarahettige, Weihong Hu, Khalid F AlHabib, Alvaro Avezum, Xiaoru Cheng, Jephat Chifamba, Gilles Dagenais, Antonio Dans, Bonaventure A Egbujie, Rajeev Gupta, Romaina Iqbal, Noorhassim Ismail, Mirac V Keskinler, Rasha Khatib, Lanthé Kruger, Rajesh Kumar, Fernando Lanas, Scott Lear, Patricio Lopez-JaramilloSummaryBackgroundData are scarce on the availability and affordability of essential medicines for diabetes. Our aim was to examine the availability and affordability of metformin, sulfonylureas, and insulin across multiple regions of the world and explore the effect of these on medicine use.MethodsIn the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study, participants aged 35–70 years (n=156 625) were recruited from 110 803 households, in 604 communities and 22 countries; availability (presence of any dose of medication in the pharmacy on the day of audit) and medicine cost data were collected from pharmacies with the Environmental Profile of a Community's Health audit tool. Our primary analysis was to describe the availability and affordability of metformin and insulin and also commonly used and prescribed combinations of two medicines for diabetes management (two oral drugs, metformin plus a sulphonylurea [either glibenclamide (also known as glyburide) or gliclazide] and one oral drug plus insulin [metformin plus insulin]). Medicines we...
Source: The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology - Category: Endocrinology Source Type: research