Essential medicines for COPD and asthma in low and middle-income countries
Open Access
- 3 March 2014
- Vol. 69 (12), 1149-1151
- https://doi.org/10.1136/thoraxjnl-2014-205249
Abstract
Access to medications for chronic disease management is limited in many low and middle-income countries (LMICs), resulting in suboptimal care and avoidable morbidity and mortality. We performed a survey of COPD and asthma medicines that appeared on the national essential medicines lists (NEMLs) of 32 LMICs. Nearly all countries (>90%) had assigned essential medicines for treatment of exacerbations and early stable disease stages, but not for steps 4 (22%) and 5 (6%) controlled asthma management. The number of treatment options was limited, with long-acting β2-agonists (LABA) and combination dosage forms being notably absent. Suboptimal availability of chronic respiratory disease medicines suggests that implementation of NEMLs is the main problem in clinical practice.This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:
- Differences in the availability of medicines for chronic and acute conditions in the public and private sectors of developing countriesBulletin of the World Health Organization, 2011