Evaluation of availability and cost of essential antibiotics for paediatrics in Mbeya, Tanzania

Background: Poor availability of essential medicines in public health facilities and high medicines prices in the private medicines outlets are still the leading problems in the management of child health in Tanzania. Children particularly newborns, surfer from the variety of disease conditions than do adults and may require different medicines. Antibiotics play a key role in treating infectious diseases which are the major cause of morbidity and mortality in the developing world. In trying to address accessibility of Essential Medicines, the WHO releases Essential Medicine List for children, after every two years and each country is required to adopt such a new list. In Tanzania, a separate list of essential medicines for children has not yet adopted. Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) is used as the integrated approach strategy to improve child health. Objective: The main objective of this study was to assess the availability, price and affordability of paediatric essential antibiotics in Mbeya Region. Methods: This was a cross-sectional survey in accordance with WHO/HAI methodology to assess the availability, affordability and price of essential antibiotics for children in Mbeya Region. Data were collected from 1 Medical store Department (Mbeya zonal office), 8 public hospitals, 30 Private Pharmacies and 30 Accredited Drug Dispensing Outlets. Median price of these medicines was compared with Management Science for Health reference prices, expressed as median price ratios. Average stock out days per year was assessed using a designed form. The salary of the lowest–paid unskilled government worker and National Poverty Line income were used to assess affordability of paediatric essential antibiotics. Results: The median availability of the lowest-price generics for paediatrics essential antibiotics at the Pharmacies, ADDO‟s and Public Hospitals was found to be 59.09%, 62.5%, and 45.5% antibiotics respectively. At the Zonal Medical stores department, only 13 out of the 22 antibiotics were in stock at the time of survey. The survey found that the median stock out days was 124 days per year. The median of Median Price Ratios of viii retail patient‟s prices for 20 generics antibiotics were 1.774 for 30 pharmacies. Also the median MPRs of 8 generic antibiotics were 2.0097 for 30 ADDO‟s. National Health Insurance Funds patient prices were 177.74% higher than public hospitals procurement price. Essential medicine such as Amoxicillin-Clavulanic acid syrup was absent in most of public hospitals and also not affordable at the pharmacies for unskilled government workers in Mbeya. Conclusion: The survey reveals poor availability of paediatric essential antibiotics in the public sector. The stock-out days of the medicines is still high in Mbeya Region. In most of private medicine outlets some of medicines prices were at higher prices and may not be affordable for majority of the population. Therefore the availability, price and affordability of antibiotics for paediatrics should be improved in order to ensure equity in access for basic treatment option of infections in children. Through adopting health financing approach at the public hospitals, consideration of other alternative strategies for control measures of medicines prices and drug subsidation for basic essential antibiotics in the private sectors will make these commodities readily available and affordable by the majority of the people