Application of the anatomical chemical system/defined daily doses: Challenges and way forward for resource‐limited countries

Abstract

Drug utilization Research (DUR) is important for improvement of patient management, optimal utilization of national pharmaceutical budgets and policy formulation. 1 As a result, DUR is strongly encouraged. 2 It includes studies on: marketing, distribution, prescription and use of drugs in a society, with special emphasis on social and economic benefits.Unfortunately, due to lack of coordinated actions for systematic DUR, 3 many resource-limited countries lack data on production, expenditure and consumption of pharmaceuticals. Conversely, this makes it difficult for policymakers and healthcare leaders to identify optimal entry points for targeted rational drug use interventions; depriving poor countries the opportunity to optimally utilize their national pharmaceutical budgets. The World Health Organization (WHO) and The International Network for Rational Use of Drugs (INRUD), in the early 1990s, developed and published a standard method for selected drug use indicators at health care facilities. These are given as: prescribing indicators, patient care indicators, facility indicators and complementary drug use indicators. The core prescribing indicators consist of the average number of drugs per prescription, proportion of patients prescribed antibiotics, proportion of patients prescribed injections, proportion of medicines prescribed by generic names and proportion of prescribed drugs from essential medicines list. 4