How a Pharmacy Survey Defined Whether a Month of Medicine Was Affordable
Finding a medication in stock and being able to pay for a course are different questions. A Sri Lankan pharmacy survey measured availability and estimated affordability separately.
Why the researchers expressed cost in days of wages
The investigators surveyed 80 community pharmacies. For chronic conditions, they estimated the cost of a month of treatment using the survey price and an assumed daily dose. They compared that cost with the daily wage of the lowest-paid unskilled government worker in 2015. In their table, the clonazepam course used for the calculation represented about 9.8 days of that benchmark wage.
What the estimate says about access
The figure depends on the wage benchmark, the assumed course and the price collected. It does not show what a specific person paid or whether they filled the prescription. A record review can use the survey as historical context while keeping a patient’s actual pharmacy, coverage and dispensing history separate.
Source
Liyanage and colleagues, BMC Health Services Research (2023). Journal article · Full text.
