Affordability of commonly prescribed antibiotics in a large tertiary teaching hospital in Ethiopia: a challenge for the national drug policy objective

Abstract

ObjectiveIn national drug policies of many countries, ensuring availability and affordability of essential medicines is indicated among the major policy objectives. To achieve the objectives, countries with low and middle income compile such medicines into NEMLs. This study aims to determine availability and affordability of commonly prescribed antibiotics at a tertiary hospital in Ethiopia by assessing (in private and public pharmacies) 13 antibiotics constituting DU90% at the hospital.ResultsAvailability of the antibiotics in the private and public pharmacies was 92.3% and 98.5%, respectively. Average MPRs for the antibiotics were 4.1 and 2.7, respectively, in the private and public pharmacies. The days’ wages (in median prices) ranged from 0.2 for treating acute diarrhea with doxycycline to 415.8 for treating HAP in public pharmacies. Costs of a single day treatment with antibiotics purchased from the public pharmacies ranged from USD 0.1 for acute diarrhea to USD 29.7 for HAP. For the private pharmacies, the range was from USD 0.1 for toxoplasmosis to USD 54.9 for HAP. This study showed that treatments of commonly diagnosed infectious conditions at TASH remain unaffordable according to the WHO/HAI criteria.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s13104-018-4021-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Trends of community-based systemic antibiotic consumption: Comparative analyses of data from Ethiopia and Norway calls for public health policy actions

“…The fact that a decreasing trend was observed in the community-based annual consumption of systemic antibiotics from 2016–2018 for Norway, as clearly documented in this study, corroborates this point. But in general, the reason for the quantitatively lower consumption of systemic antibiotics per year in Ethiopia during the study period (2016–2018) could rather be due to other factors related to the problems of affordability of essential medicines, particularly antibiotics, in the country’s public health sector, as has been documented in our earlier study [ 45 ] and also elsewhere [ 46 ]. Besides, the lower consumption data could be related to other socio-cultural determinants like low healthcare services seeking behaviors of the general population living in the vast rural parts of Ethiopia [ 47 – 49 ]—of course to the detriment to the total health of the general population [ 50 ].…”

Improving the Inhibitory Effect of Phages against Pseudomonas aeruginosa Isolated from a Burn Patient Using a Combination of Phages and Antibiotics

“…The estimated MICs of the antibiotics for P. aeruginosa isolate #14 were 128 μg·mL −1 for ciprofloxacin, 256 μg·mL −1 for gentamicin, 0.75 μg·mL −1 for colistin, and 2 μg·mL −1 for imipenem. From these four, we chose two antibiotics—ciprofloxacin and gentamicin—that are more available, affordable, and less toxic, especially when compared to colistin [ 38 , 39 , 40 ].…”

Implementing essential diagnostics-learning from essential medicines: A scoping review

“…This is coupled with awarding tenders to companies without the capacity to supply medical supplies, providing financial incentives to pharmacists from pharmaceutical to dispense specific drugs, and tenders 68,70,72 . The trading of counterfeit medicines was also identified as a barrier to implementing EML 124 .…”