Tropical Health Matters

Meike Schleiff of the Department of International Health, The JHU Bloomberg School of Public Health has explored how Burkina Faso manages to get essential medicines, including those for malaria, to the front line health services. She explains that the World Health Organization (WHO) has determined essential medicines to be, “those that satisfy the priority health care needs of the population. They are selected with due regard to public health relevance, evidence on efficacy and safety, and comparative cost-effectiveness.”(WHO, 2018) These medicines should be available as part of health systems functioning to all persons at appropriate amounts, affordable costs, quality standards and sufficient information assured to consumers. Every country develops an essential drug list,

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In Burkina Faso, approval of modern medicines (specialty and generic), traditional pharmacopoeial drugs, medical consumables and medical biology reagents is assigned to the Drug Regulatory Directorate (DRP).

Essential Medicines in Burkina Faso are purchased and distributed primarily through the Centrale d’Achats des Médicaments Essentiels (CAMEG), or Central Purchasing of Essential Drugs system.(CAMEG, 2018) This CAMEG system operates with two agencies in Ouagadougou, and then has seven additional agencies in other zones of the country (see map). From the zonal agencies, the CAMEG supplies 67 District Dispatching Depots (DRDs), and also supplies University Hospital Centers, regional hospitals, and additional services provided by the Ministry of Health. For the private sector, the CAMEG manages supplies for NGOs, faith-based organizations, medical laboratories, pharmaceutical companies, and the Global Fund for HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria.(CAMEG, 2018)

Before the CAMEG was created, access to essential medicines and supplies was very difficult, particularly for rural and other hard to reach populations. This was due to geographical access as well as high prices for specialty drugs, limited availability of generic drugs, and prohibitive regulations against the introduction of generic medicines. In response to this situation, the CAMEG was created under a presidential decree in 1992 and commenced activities in 1994. In 1997, an evaluation was carried out to determine the impact of the CAMEG and decide whether to continue the activities through a long-term structure; the results of this evaluation proposed establishing a legally and financially autonomous non-profit entity to carry forward the work of the CAMEG.(CAMEG, 2018) Today, the CAMEG manages the selection of drug suppliers for the country, ensures compliance with WHO and national regulations on price and quality, and facilitates distribution and storage of drugs across the country. A full product list of the drugs managed by the CAMEG can be found on their website (www.cameg.com).

Community Level

The availability of essential generic medicines at health and social welfare centres in Burkina Faso is 74.5%, compared with an average of 40% across the African region and less than 60% globally.(World Health, 2016, Ministry of Health, 2010) For hospitals, rates are slightly lower with 61% of generics available and regional hospital centers and 39% at university hospital centers (Saouadogo and Compaore, 2010), but only 1.2% of branded medicines; this situation results in patients who are referred to hospitals from lower level facilities often being forced to purchase medicines from more expensive private pharmacies in order to receive the necessary care at higher levels of the health system.(Vervoort, 2012)

While immense progress has been made in ensuring affordability and accessibility of essential medicines in Burkina Faso, mark-ups at different points along the supply chain still result in prohibitively high prices at final points of sale; patients still pay for 37% of the cost of essential medicines and remain the single greatest healthcare cost for households in Burkina and a burden for the majority of the population who still live on less than $1.25 per day.(Vervoort, 2012)

References

CAMEG 2018. Centrale d’Achats des Médicaments Essentiels. Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

Ministry of Health 2010. Measuring the Price, Availability, Financial Accessibility, and Price Composition of Medicines in Burkina Faso. Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso: Ministry of Health of Burkina Faso.

Saouadogo, H. and Compaore, M. (2010) ‘Essential Medicines Access Survey in Public Hospitals in Burkina Faso’, 4(6), pp. 373-380.

Vervoort, K. 2012. Ensuring the Availability of Essential Medicines in Burkina Faso: A Shared Responsibility.

WHO 2018. Essential Medicines. Geneva, Switzerland.

World Health, O. (2016) Burkina Faso: Country Cooperation Strategy. Available at: http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/136973/ccsbrief_bfa_en.pdf (Accessed: May).

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