The National Drug Policy (NDP) of Lao PDR, endorsed in 1993, has since 1995 been implemented through an intervention program in five pilot areas out of 18 provinces, including training of health personnel. The aim was to assess the impact of the NDP program to get evidence for revising the policy. In a cross sectional design, comparisons were made between the pilot province of Luangphrabang (LP...

Most of the world's health problems afflict poor countries and their poorest inhabitants. There are many reasons why so many people die of poverty-related causes. One reason is that the poor cannot access many of the existing drugs and technologies they need. Another, is that little of the research and development (R&D) done on new drugs and technologies benefits the poor. There are several pro...

The objective of this study is to investigate the quality of drug prescriptions in nine health centres of three districts in rural Burkina Faso. 313 outpatient consultations were studied by methods of guided observation. Additionally interviews were held with the health care workers involved in the study. A total of 793 drugs prescribed by 15 health care workers during the observation period an...

distress. A study carried out as part of the NHS workforce survey found no difference in the levels of distress between responders and non-responders, suggesting that non-response was not systematically related to psychological health. Our results may not be generalisable to non-teaching hospitals and might be confounded by the fact that consultants and house officers were selected from differe...

Many factors influence the regulation of pharmaceuticals in a country. The essential drugs concept, formulated by the World Health Organization to assist developing countries in selecting appropriate drugs, also provides a basis for regulation. Sri Lanka has long regulated pharmaceuticals as part of its health policy. Over 70% of 3436 pharmaceutical product registrations were found to be drugs ...

The lawsuits with antineoplastic drugs generate high costs for governments and require careful analysis to ensure efficient and adequate health results. This study analyzed cases conducted by federal entities to a reference institute for the treatment of cancer for technical opinion. Data were collected from copies of the cases examined from July 1 to December 31, 2013. It was analyzed: therape...

now closed to this country, and this, together with the necessity of conserving foreign exchange and avoiding the waste of shipping space by the importation of non-essential drugs and chemicals, renders the problem of finding adequate alternatives pressing \?Extract from preface to the Extra Pharmacopoeia, volume 1, 1941. Drug economy is surely as necessary to the war effort in India as it is i...

OBJECTIVES Price is a key obstacle for consumer access to essential drugs, especially in developing countries. This study sought to compare the retail prices of essential drugs on the private market in Brazil with that of two international pricing standards. METHODS The retail price of all drugs on Brazil's Essential Drugs List, July 2000 edition, were compared to the retail price of the same...

A descriptive cross-sectional study evaluated the compliance of physicians with the Palestinian essential drug list (EDL) in all the government primary care clinics in the Gaza Strip. While 67.4% reported currently using the EDL 51.2% of these physicians reported problems in using it. The mean number of drugs per prescription was 1.92, the percentage of drugs prescribed from the EDL was 97.9% b...

Antidotes and certain other drugs are essential for treating some types of poisoning. Failures in their supply can jeopardize the population's health and safety. The current study aimed to assess the availability of antidotes and other drugs used in the treatment of poisonings in Brazil. International guidelines were used as the basis for selecting 41 antidotes for analysis, none of which curre...