NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, November 10, 2016

The cost of providing essential medicines to people in low- and middle-income countries is surprisingly low, a panel of experts is reporting.

But in most of those poorer countries even that low expenditure on medicines — from $12.90 to $25.40 per person annually — is not being made, according to the expert panel, sponsored by The Lancet and supported by academic institutions and philanthropic groups.

Indeed, low-income countries on average have annual per capita spending on medicines — both public and private — of less than $9 a year, according to The Lancet Commission on Essential Medicines, reporting online in The Lancet.

At the same time, the world as a whole will spend an estimated $1.2 trillion on medicines in 2017 or about eight times the yearly total — from $77.4 to $151.9 billion — needed to bring essential medicines to people in the developing countries, according to Andy Gray, of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, who is one of the commission’s co-chairs.