Overcoming Shortages of Essential Medicines: Perspectives from Industrial and Systems Engineering and Public Health Practice

Abstract

The landscape of access to essential medicines changes drastically across national boundaries. Inequity is severe, yet, difficult to capture accurately. Those who manage pharmaceutical supply chains rely on measures like number of pharmacies per capita, availability of essential medicines and number of pharmaceutical personnel per capita to get an estimate of the spread of this inequity. These metrics are very important in making policy level decisions on pharmaceutical spending, pharmaceutical procurement, pharmaceutical distribution, education, infrastructure, and personnel structuring. But what do these metrics mean to the consumer? How do people’s health or quality of life compare in locations with starkly different indicators? This chapter provides an overview of the distribution of and access to essential medicines.