BACKGROUND Various barriers exist that preclude individuals from undergoing surgical care in low-income countries. Our study assessed the main barriers in Nepal, and identified individuals most at risk for not receiving required surgical care. METHODS A countrywide survey, using the Surgeons OverSeas Assessment of Surgical Need (SOSAS) survey tool, was carried out in 2014, surveying 2,695 ind...

1 The Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Kragujevac, Kragujevac, Serbia, 2 Department of Health Services Research, CAPHRI, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University Medical Centre, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands, 3 Top Institute Evidence-Based Education Research (TIER), Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands, 4 Faculty of Social and Pol...

BACKGROUND China is actively promoting regulation of rare diseases, rare disease and orphan drugs have been formally incorporated into the national planning. However, few studies have been done to evaluate the affordability of rare disease patients in China. This study aims to provide policy recommendations for the establishment of social security mechanism for rare diseases in China, so as to ...

background & aim :facilitating people’s access to necessary health services is one of the most important strategies to reach social justice within countries’ health system. therefore in-time access to health cares and ensuring desirable results are essential. this study was conducted to evaluate the perception of martyrs’ parents of accessing the services of health monitoring plan. materials an...

INTRODUCTION There are major differences in cancer drug prices around the world. However, the patterns of affordability of these drugs are poorly understood. The objective of this study was to compare patterns of affordability of cancer drugs in Australia, China, India, Israel, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. RESULTS Cancer drug prices are highest in the United States...

BACKGROUND Affordable, accessible, and innovation-promoting pharmaceutical care is essential to the operation of a sustainable health system. External reference pricing (ERP), a common pharmaceutical policy in Europe, suffers today from indigenous weaknesses that may cause market distortions and barriers to care, burdening mostly the weak economies, and hence, raising ethical and political worr...

Cardiovascular disease is one of the most important causes of death in the world. There are variety of plans and strategies to treatment and prevention of CVD. Medicines have significant role to reach the goals. Ensuring Affordability of medicines is very crucial to success in these programs. The impoverishment method which focuses on the impoverishing effect of the purchasing of medicines is o...

The issue of affordability of health care services remains high on the (health) policy agenda. Determining whether health care services are affordable is complex, however, as the concept 'affordability' is inherently normative. With a focus on measuring affordability in low- and middle-income countries, we discuss different methods used to operationalize this concept. Using the example of medic...