Measuring availability, affordability and management of essential medicines in public hospitals of Burkina Faso.

In Burkina Faso, improving healthcare services and the availability of pharmaceutical products constitute a growing concern for the population. This study objective was to evaluate the availability, prices, and sales revenue for a grouping of 50 basic medications in public hospitals from 29 September-29 December 2009. The method used to study the prices, availability, affordability and price components from Health Action International (HAI) and the World Health Organization (WHO) has been used to collect and analyze the data. The results show that the average ratio between the pharmaceutical budget and that of the health centre is 16.18. The average rate of availability was 77.69%. The purchasing price from the hospitals providers is approximately the same as the international reference prices (1.12). The public hospitals selling price to the public was double the buying price from their provider (2.20). The total sales revenue from the first three trimesters of 2009 was 708,740,495 FCFA (Euro 1,080,397). This revenue accounted for roughly 23.02% of the total costs for available pharmaceuticals during the period (3,078,938,053 FCFA/Euro 4,693,503).