Availability and price variation of essential medicines in public health facilities in Rwanda during the Covid-19 pandemic. Case study of district hospitals in Kigali City and Eastern Province

Abstract

Background: Since long ago, humanity has been facing natural disasters, calamities, and pandemics whose aftermaths were disastrous and affected the availability of essential medicines. Smallpox and tuberculosis devastated the globe before the advancement of health sciences. The situation worsened in December 2019 with the Breakout of COVID-19. The pandemic has affected over 200 countries and territories, with outbreaks in countries such as Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Western Europe, India, Peru, and the United States of America are just a few of the countries involved among others. This study was conducted to see how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the availability and price of essential medicines in public health facilities in Rwanda.

Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive study design was used to determine how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the availability and price of essential medicines in Rwandan public health institutions. Participants were selected using the purposive sampling method. To collect data on the availability of vital products, stock cards of essential drugs were carefully selected. Checklists and end-to-end structured questionnaires were used to collect data based on USAID Logistics Indicators Assessment Tool (LIAT). The data were entered into MS Excel, then analyzed with SPSS software version 21.0.

Results: The findings of this scientific work revealed that the level of availability was (89%) and the price during COVID-19 was high relative to the selling price before COVID-19 pandemics where the high price change rate was observed at Cimetidine inj. 200mg/2ml (201%), Dexamethasone 4mg/ml 1ml inj (254%), Examination gloves latex, non-sterile (265%) and Adrenaline inj. 1mg/ml (214%). The availability has been mostly affected by factors like limited number of suppliers and heavy workload (89%), absence from work due to COVID-19 illness (84%), and other factors linked to COVID-19 movement restrictive measures.

Conclusion: The level of availability was at 89%, the delivery status and the level of sufficiency were appreciated. However, more than 73% concurred on factors such as the limited number of suppliers, heavy workload, absence from work due to illness, long lead time, limited transport affected the availability of EM in the Public Health Facilities in Rwanda. Hence, the price of essential medicines during the COVID19 pandemic was high relative to the price before the COVID-19 pandemic.