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The availability of six tracer medicines in private medicine outlets in Uganda

OBJECTIVES: Many low income countries struggle to provide safe and effective medicines due to poor public health care infrastructure, budgetary constraints, and lack of human resource capacity. Private sector pharmacies and drug shops are used by a majority of the population as an alternative to pub...

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Autores principales: Birabwa, Catherine, Murison, Jude, Evans, Valerie, Obua, Celestino, Agaba, Amon, Waako, Paul, Pollock, Allyson
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4276013/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25667747
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40545-014-0018-y
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author Birabwa, Catherine
Murison, Jude
Evans, Valerie
Obua, Celestino
Agaba, Amon
Waako, Paul
Pollock, Allyson
author_facet Birabwa, Catherine
Murison, Jude
Evans, Valerie
Obua, Celestino
Agaba, Amon
Waako, Paul
Pollock, Allyson
author_sort Birabwa, Catherine
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVES: Many low income countries struggle to provide safe and effective medicines due to poor public health care infrastructure, budgetary constraints, and lack of human resource capacity. Private sector pharmacies and drug shops are used by a majority of the population as an alternative to public pharmacies. This study looks at the availability of six essential medicines in private drug outlets across Uganda. METHODS: A standardised medicines availability survey developed by the World Health Organization and Health Action International was adapted for use in this project to collect availability data for six tracer medicines in 126 private medicine outlets across four districts in Uganda from September 2011 to October 2012. RESULTS: Artemisinin-based combination treatments and metformin were the most commonly found medicines in the private medicine outlets surveyed. Ninty-nine percent of all outlets carried artemisinin-based combinations while 93% of pharmacies and 53% of drug shops stocked metformin. Oxytocin was found in one third of outlets surveyed. Fluoxetine was in 70% of pharmacies yet was not found in any drug shops. Rifampicin and lamivudine were found infrequently in outlets across all districts; 10% and 2%, respectively. Not all brands found in surveyed outlets were listed on the Ugandan National Drug Register. In particular, five unlisted brands of rifampicin were found in private medicine outlets. CONCLUSIONS: The regulatory process should be improved through the enforcement of outlet licensing and medicine registration. Additional studies to elucidate the reasons behind the use of private medicine outlets over the public sector would assist the government in implementing interventions to increase use of public sector medicine outlets.
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spelling pubmed-42760132015-02-09 The availability of six tracer medicines in private medicine outlets in Uganda Birabwa, Catherine Murison, Jude Evans, Valerie Obua, Celestino Agaba, Amon Waako, Paul Pollock, Allyson J Pharm Policy Pract Research Article OBJECTIVES: Many low income countries struggle to provide safe and effective medicines due to poor public health care infrastructure, budgetary constraints, and lack of human resource capacity. Private sector pharmacies and drug shops are used by a majority of the population as an alternative to public pharmacies. This study looks at the availability of six essential medicines in private drug outlets across Uganda. METHODS: A standardised medicines availability survey developed by the World Health Organization and Health Action International was adapted for use in this project to collect availability data for six tracer medicines in 126 private medicine outlets across four districts in Uganda from September 2011 to October 2012. RESULTS: Artemisinin-based combination treatments and metformin were the most commonly found medicines in the private medicine outlets surveyed. Ninty-nine percent of all outlets carried artemisinin-based combinations while 93% of pharmacies and 53% of drug shops stocked metformin. Oxytocin was found in one third of outlets surveyed. Fluoxetine was in 70% of pharmacies yet was not found in any drug shops. Rifampicin and lamivudine were found infrequently in outlets across all districts; 10% and 2%, respectively. Not all brands found in surveyed outlets were listed on the Ugandan National Drug Register. In particular, five unlisted brands of rifampicin were found in private medicine outlets. CONCLUSIONS: The regulatory process should be improved through the enforcement of outlet licensing and medicine registration. Additional studies to elucidate the reasons behind the use of private medicine outlets over the public sector would assist the government in implementing interventions to increase use of public sector medicine outlets. BioMed Central 2014-12-08 /pmc/articles/PMC4276013/ /pubmed/25667747 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40545-014-0018-y Text en © Birabwa et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Birabwa, Catherine
Murison, Jude
Evans, Valerie
Obua, Celestino
Agaba, Amon
Waako, Paul
Pollock, Allyson
The availability of six tracer medicines in private medicine outlets in Uganda
title The availability of six tracer medicines in private medicine outlets in Uganda
title_full The availability of six tracer medicines in private medicine outlets in Uganda
title_fullStr The availability of six tracer medicines in private medicine outlets in Uganda
title_full_unstemmed The availability of six tracer medicines in private medicine outlets in Uganda
title_short The availability of six tracer medicines in private medicine outlets in Uganda
title_sort availability of six tracer medicines in private medicine outlets in uganda
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4276013/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25667747
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40545-014-0018-y
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