Prices and Affordability of Essential Medicines across Pacific Latin America during Economic Crisis

-
Investigator: Leslie Wilson, PhD, MS
Sponsor: UC Pacific Rim Research Program

Location(s): Argentina; Ecuador

Description

The objective of the project is to determine the affordability of essential medicines across Pacific Latin American countries during recent economic crises using different methods for calculating purchasing power parities. Countries of the Pacific Rim share deep historical and cultural connections and our partners and their residing countries (Argentina and Ecuador) represent a diversity of political, economic and cultural situations among themselves. Medicines account for 20 to 60% of health spending in these countries and most comes from out-of-pocket payments. We will use the WHO/HAI guidelines for collection of medication price and access data. We will determine prices using different types of exchange rates, and calculate the affordability for each country. This work will allow us to determine the differences in prices and affordability of medicines across these countries during economic change.