'Essential' Meds for the World Are Surprisingly Cheap As little as $1/month per person could support basic package

The cost of providing essential medicines to people in low- and middle-income countries is surprisingly low, a panel of experts is reporting. But in most of those poorer countries even that low expenditure on medicines -- from $12.90 to $25.40 per person annually -- is not being made, according to the expert panel, sponsored by The Lancet and supported by academic institutions and philanthropic groups. Indeed, low-income countries on average have annual per capita spending on medicines -- both public and private -- of less than $9 a year, according to The Lancet Commission on Essential Medicines, reporting online in The Lancet. At the same time, the world as a whole will spend an estimated $1.2 trillion on medicines in 2017 or about eight times the yearly total -- from $77.4 to $151.9 billion -- needed to bring essential medicines to people in the developing countries, according to Andy Gray, of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, who is one of the commission's co-chairs. Those figures "highlight massive inequities and inefficiencies," Gray told reporters in a telephone briefing. http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/PublicHealth/61292?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2016-11-09&eun=g721819d0r&pos=0