Pharmaceutical pricing in Ethiopia

Abstract

The Ethiopian health care system is under constant reforms that evidently continued to increase the health service coverage and improve the quality of life of the population. As a result of such expansions, the size of the pharmaceutical market is expected to double in less than a decade. However, low level of access to essential medicines is still a problem. The main reasons for the problem of access being: (1) erratic supply of pharmaceuticals especially in public health facilities and (2) unaffordable prices of essential medicines for the poor. Although the government is in the process of instituting social health insurance, households’ out of pocket expenditure on medicines constitutes a major share of their health care spending. The pharmaceutical pricing situation is characterized by absence of clear medicines pricing policy, high retail markups, and high variation in prices of medicines. Pharmaceutical prices are not controlled by the government and there is no system for pharmacoeconomic evaluation. Hence appropriate pricing policies complemented by a proper system of pharmacoeconomic evaluation should be introduced.