Journal of Applied Pharmacy
Open Access

Enhancing Prescription Drug Accessibility: A Strategy for Discovering Pharmacies in Underdeveloped Countries

Wange Boating^{* *}Correspondence: Wange Boating, Department of Medicine, Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taipei and Hsinchu, Taiwan, Email:

Author info »

Description

One of the main issues facing the health sector in developing nations is the availability of drugs at pharmacies. In many cases, patients are compelled to randomly transfer pharmacies in an attempt to obtain the required medication. Some of the problems include a lack of drug information communication and inventory systems between hospitals and pharmacies, as well as a lack of awareness regarding the locations of pharmacies that carry the required medications. By preventing delays in medicine distribution, the structure may save patient expenses. Additionally, it will open the door for e-Health information systems and pharmaceuticals in the future.

To establish a structure that will facilitate the process of finding and locating a local pharmacy for everyone in need of one, the main barriers to getting necessary prescription medications that were found in the literature were used to develop the framework. The framework locates the closest pharmacies that contain the necessary prescription medication by using the latitude and longitude coordinates of the client and the pharmacies.

Community pharmacies are a fundamental element of the pharmaceutical industry and are essential to the provision of healthcare. Generally speaking, they are easier to get to than other medical facilities. Most people use community pharmacies, particularly in underdeveloped nations where a lack of resources prevents many sick individuals from getting hospital care. According to earlier research, patients in Ethiopia (57.6%) and Ghana (55%) visit community pharmacies to get prescription medications. According to another study, older adults consume prescription drugs at higher rates than people in other age groups because they are more prone to get seasonal illnesses on a regular basis.

It is typically difficult to get all of your prescription medications filled at one pharmacy, especially for essential medications, whether you live in a city or a rural area. Less than half of recommended medications are purchased from government pharmacies, according to an Ethiopian survey, and one in six patients were coerced into buying medications from the private market. According to a case study examining the cost and accessibility of locally made and imported medications in Tanzania and Ethiopia, patients in the private sector paid, respectively, 17% and 53% (in Ethiopia) and 135% and 65% (in Tanzania) more than the price of government procurement for local and imported goods. A different research investigation on the cost-effectiveness of frequently recommended antibiotics in a major Ethiopian tertiary teaching hospital shows that a singleday course of antibiotics bought from public and private pharmacies costs 29.7 USD and 54.9 USD, respectively, nearly twice as much. As a result, patients frequently have to haphazardly hop from pharmacy to drugstore in an attempt to get a prescription medication at a lower cost. This may be rather inconvenient and tiresome, especially for ill patients.

Availability of prescription drugs in drugstore is one of the main issues facing the health sector in developing nations. There are few and ineffective methods for getting the best possible access to the medications that are offered at government or commercial pharmacies. Patients typically have to visit multiple pharmacies in order to find the drug, which raises the expense of therapy and negatively influences the impoverished by making them undertreat their ailments and leading to medication nonadherence. According to several researches, individuals who use prescription drugs usually only take approximately half of the recommended dosages. It is estimated that this non-adherence results in at least 10% of inpatient stays, 125,000 deaths, and costs the economy $100 billion annually. Therefore, maximizing restrictions to ensure prompt access to necessary medication is a crucial enabler of the overall population's state of health. It is well known that patients can find various healthcare services, such as pharmacies or hospitals, with the use of apps like Google Maps. The issue is that the locations on the map do not ensure that the patient will be able to find the medication they are seeking for. Numerous smartphone applications have also been created with the primary goal of optimizing distance. These programs use GPS, Google maps, and the Dijkstra algorithm to find the closest medical facilities, as well as the closest pharmacy.

To properly optimize the search process, however, additional constraints such as drug cost, travel cost, journey duration, and pharmacy working hours must be taken into account. The purpose of this study was to address these issues and streamline the process of locating the closest pharmacies in Mbarara, Western Uganda, that provide the necessary prescription medications. The research was carried out in 2020 for duration of one year in Mbarara, Uganda, with a primary focus on the African developing countries mentioned.