Noncommunicable diseases, access to essential medicines and universal health coverage

ABSTRACT

Universal Health Coverage is key to reach the overall health-related Sustainable Development Goal, and within this, access to safe, effective, quality, and affordable essential medicines is critical. Currently, medicines for noncommunicable diseases in many countries are not available when needed and if they are present, are unaffordable. Countries face the challenges of rising prevalence of noncommunicable diseases due to increasing risk factors and ageing populations, along with under-diagnosis and under-treatment. Providing noncommunicable disease medicines is only one piece of a complex picture of providing care within Universal Health Coverage that requires strengthening health-care systems, as well as financial resources, priority setting, and monitoring and evaluation systems. Financing for Universal Health Coverage needs to enable adequate resources to be allocated for medicines with a focus on equity as well as priority setting for noncommunicable diseases medicines for reimbursement in benefits packages, efficient procurement and distribution of these medicines, supported by price regulation. These processes need to be evidence-based, transparent and grounded on national values and priorities. Monitoring and evaluation of availability and affordability are key components of sustainable reimbursement systems. With the current Universal Health Coverage agenda, the World Health Organization and countries can no longer ignore the issue of access to medicines for noncommunicable disease and need to develop the appropriate responses in order to guarantee equitable access.

KEYWORDS:

• Universal health coverage
• medicines
• access
• health systems

Responsible Editor Stig Wall, Umeå University, Sweden

Responsible Editor Stig Wall, Umeå University, Sweden

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Paper context

Universal Health Coverage is indispensable to reach Sustainable Development Goal 3, and access to essential medicines is a critical component. Increasing prevalence of noncommunicable diseases, along with under-diagnosis and under-treatment, in parallel to increasing costs of noncommunicable disease medicines pose a threat to Universal Health Coverage in all settings. In this paper these challenges are described and proposals to develop appropriate responses to guarantee equitable access presented.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was received by any of the authors for this paper.

Notes on contributors

David Beran

All authors contributed to the conception of this paper. DB developed the first draft with critical revisions from all co-authors. All authors agree to the final version of this paper and ensure its accuracy and integrity.