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Progress in standard indicators of medicines use over 20 years. Medicines use in primary care in developing and transitional countries Results from studies reported between 1990-2009. Kathleen Holloway, Verica Ivanovska, Dennis Ross-Degnan. Background.
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Progress in standard indicators of medicines use over 20 years Medicines use in primary care in developing and transitional countriesResults from studies reported between 1990-2009 Kathleen Holloway, Verica Ivanovska, Dennis Ross-Degnan
Background • Irrational medicines use is a worldwide problem that is receiving insufficient attention • Little routine monitoring, few large scale interventions and poor policy framework to improve use (ICIUM 2004) Objectives • To do a systematic quantitative review of studies published between 1990 and 2009 on medicine use in primary care in developing & transitional countries and to assess the impact of interventions done to improve use… • in order to provide the evidence of the seriousness of the problem and what interventions are effective • in line with recommendations from ICIUM 2004 and the request from WHA60.16 to undertake monitoring and advocacy
Methods • Database (MS Access) created of studies on the use of medicines in primary care in developing and transitional countries • All studies published during 1990 – 2009 reporting quantitative data eligible for inclusion • Data on commonly used medicine use indicators measured in these studies plus details of study setting and methodology extracted from the reports/articles & entered into the database • Studies identified from INRUD bibliography, PubMed, WHO archives (EMP, CAH), MSH archives • As far as possible, extracted data from one study was entered as one database record • All data-entry checked by 2 persons (KAH, VI) • Analysis done using excel • To estimate trends and patterns of use, medians of medicine use indicators (limited to baseline data for intervention studies)estimated by study year, region, facility ownership, and prescriber type were calculated
Results • 1033 surveys conducted in 104 countries – identified • 87% surveys included > 2 health facilities &/or > 599 patient encounters • Facility type • % of surveys done in the public sector 70%, private-for-profit sector 28% and private not-for-profit sector 2% • % of surveys done in pharmacy shops 15%, non-licensed shops 2%, households 3%, hospitals 13%, PHCs 46% and hospitals+PHCs 21% • Prescriber type • % surveys examining prescribing by doctors 35%, nurses or paramedics 52%, CHW 6%, pharmacist/assts 4%, layperson 3% • Patient type • 32% studies investigated medicines use in children < 5 years
% No.drugs/Px 4 3 2 1 Public vs private medicines use:doctors, nurses & paramedics only
Intervention impact • 405 surveys (226 in children) were associated with an intervention to improve medicines use • 110 interventions (45 in children) were adequately evaluated, using RCT, pre-post with control or time series study design • Effect size of interventions • Pre-post change (intervention group) – pre-post change (control) calculated for each outcome measured in each study • 2 measures of effect for each intervention study: • largest % change in any outcome measured • median % change across all outcomes measured • Median of the above 2 measures calculated across all studies by intervention type
Intervention impact: largest % change in any medicines use outcome measured in each study
Intervention impact: median % change over all medicines use outcomes measured in each study (av.4/study)
Conclusions • Key Lessons Learnt • Medicines use remains poor in all regions over the past 25 years and is worse in the private compared to the public sector • Effective interventions are those with multiple components e.g. education for providers and consumers with provider supervision or group process • Medicines use database can be used to monitor drug use and intervention impact in developing & transitional countries, where there is little data and methodological limitations • Policy implications: • Implement more multi-faceted interventions to medicines use & evaluate the impact using adequate study design • Database can provide evidence to inform policy (as for WHA60.16) • Future research agenda: • Identify how to build effective interventions & monitoring into the health care systems in a sustainable way • How to expand/maintain the drug use database and put it in the public domain (requires funds) • Validation of analytical methods used in order to do more comparisons & benchmarking of countries with regard to drug use