A Review of Pharmaceutical Policies Adopted by Countries in Economic Sanctions or Crisis

Kheirandish M¹ (MD, PhD), Rashidian A²* (MD, PhD)

¹ Department of Pharmacoecomics and Pharmaceutical management, School of Pharmacy,

Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

² Department of Health Management and Economics, School of Public Health,

Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

Original Article

Received: 2 Jan 2016, Accepted: 18 Apr 2016

Abstract

Health care system is responsible to provide community health in each country, and one of its main roles is developing and performing the right policies at the right time. Health care system and achieving its goals can be influenced by various factors. Economic sanction and crisis could influence the health care system by affecting economic status of the target countries. In this paper the pharmaceutical policies which applied by countries to reduce the negative impacts of economic crisis on access to medicine. The electronic databases Google scholar and PubMed were searched. The policies were categorized based on WHO framework for access to medicine. Totally 89 policies among 11 countries were extracted which stratified in 12 categories. Most of the countries had adopted similar policies focusing on financial aspects of the medicine sector. Only Italy had covered all dimensions of WHO framework to access medicine. The review showed the most of the studies just have explained the adopted policies, and there were few studies have assesses the effectiveness of the policies on access to medicine.

Key words:  Economic sanction/ Economic crisis, Pharmaceutical policies, Access to medicine

Please cite this article as follows:

Kheirandish M, Rashidian A. A Review of Pharmaceutical Policies Adopted by Countries in Economic Sanctions or Crisis. Hakim Health Sys Res 2016; 19(2): 64- 68.