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Prices of antihypertensive medicines in sub-Saharan Africa and alignment to WHO’s model list of essential medicines

2010; Wiley; Volume: 15; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1365-3156.2009.02453.x

1365-3156

Marc Twagirumukiza, Lieven Annemans, Jan Kips, Emile Bienvenu, Luc M. Van Bortel,

Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life

Objective To investigate compliance of National Essential Medicines Lists (NEMLs) with the WHO Essential Medicines List (WHO/EML) in 2007 and to compare prices of antihypertensive drugs in and between 13 sub-Saharan African countries. Methodology Data on NEMLs and drug prices were collected from 65 public and 65 private pharmacies (five of each per country). Prices were compared with the International Drug Price Indicator Guide (IDPIG). The cost of drug treatment within a country was calculated using defined daily doses (DDD) and between countries using DDD prices adjusted for purchasing power parity-based gross domestic product per capita. Results All surveyed countries had a NEML. However, none of these lists were in complete alignment with the 2007 WHO/EML, and 38% had not been updated in the last 5 years. Surveyed medicines were cheaper when on the NEMLs; they were also cheaper in public than in private pharmacies. Prices varied greatly per medicine. A large majority of the public prices were higher than those indicated by the IDPIG. Overall, hydrochlorothiazide is the cheapest drug. Conclusion There are substantial differences in NEML composition between the 13 countries. The proportion of NEMLs not regularly updated was double the global United Nations estimates. Prices of WHO/EML-advised drugs differ greatly between drugs and for each drug within and between countries. In general, the use of drugs on the NEML improves financial accessibility, and these drugs should be prescribed preferentially. Prix des médicaments antihypertenseurs en Afrique sub-saharienne et l'alignement avec la liste modèle des médicaments essentiels de l'OMS Objectif: Investiguer l'accord entre les listes nationales de médicaments essentiels et celle de l'OMS de 2007 et comparer les prix des médicaments antihypertenseurs dans et entre 13 pays d'Afrique sub-saharienne. Méthodologie: Les données sur les listes nationales de médicaments essentiels et les prix des médicaments ont été recueillies à partir de 65 pharmacies publiques et 65 privées (5 de chaque par pays). Les prix ont été comparés avec ceux du Guide International des Indicateurs de Prix des Médicaments. Le coût des traitements médicamenteux au sein d'un pays a été calculéà l'aide des doses journalières définies et entre les pays, en utilisant le prix pour la dose journalière définie, corrigé pour la parité du pouvoir d'achat basée sur le produit intérieur brut par habitant. Résultats: Tous les pays étudiés avaient une liste nationale des médicaments essentiels. Cependant, aucune de ces listes n'étaient en accord complet avec la liste des médicaments essentiels de l'OMS de 2007 et 38% n'avaient pas été mises à jour depuis les 5 dernières années. Les médicaments investigués étaient meilleur marché lorsqu'ils figuraient sur la liste nationale des médicaments essentiels, ils coûtaient également moins cher dans les pharmacies publiques que dans les pharmacies privées. Les prix variaient énormément selon le médicament. Pour une grande majorité, les prix publics étaient plus élevés que ceux indiqués dans le Guide International des Indicateurs de Prix des Médicaments. Généralement, l'hydrochlorothiazide était le moins cher des médicaments. Conclusion: Il existe des différences importantes dans le contenu des Listes nationales des médicaments essentiels entre les 13 pays. La proportion des listes nationales de médicaments essentiels qui ne sont pas mises à jour régulièrement était le double des estimations mondiales de l'ONU. Les prix des médicaments essentiels recommandés par la liste de l'OMS diffèraient énormément entre les médicaments et pour chaque médicament à l'intérieur et entre les pays. En général, l'utilisation des médicaments sur la liste nationale des médicaments essentiels améliore l'accessibilité financière et ces médicaments devraient être prescrits de façon préférentielle. Precios de los medicamentos antihipertensivos en África sub-Sahariana y su alineamiento con la lista modelo de medicamentos esenciales de la OMS Objetivo: Investigar el cumplimiento de la Lista Nacional de Medicamentos Esenciales con la lista de la OMS de Medicamentos Esenciales del 2007 y comparar los precios de medicamentos antihipertensivos en y entre 13 países de África sub-Sahariana. Metodología: Se recolectaron datos sobre la Lista Nacional de Medicamentos Esenciales y precios de medicamentos de 65 farmacias públicas y 65 privadas (5 de cada por país). Los precios se compararon con la Guía Internacional de Indicadores de Precios de Medicamentos. El coste del tratamiento dentro de un país se calculó utilizando dosis diarias definidas y entre países utilizando precios de dosis diarias definidas, ajustados por la paridad del poder adquisitivo, basándose en el producto interior bruto per capita. Resultados: Todos los países encuestados tenían una Lista Nacional de Medicamentos Esenciales. Sin embargo, ninguna de estas listas estaba completamente alineada con la lista de la OMS de Medicamentos Esenciales del 2007 y un 38% no habían sido puestas al día en los últimos 5 años. Las medicinas incluidas en la encuesta eran más baratas cuando se encontraban en la Lista Nacional de Medicamentos Esenciales; también eran más baratas en las farmacias públicas que en las privadas. Los precios variaban bastante para una misma medicina. Una gran mayoría de precios públicos eran mayores que aquellos indicados por la Guía Internacional de Precios de Medicamentos Indicados. En general, la hidroclorotiazida era el medicamento más barato. Conclusión: Existen diferencias sustanciales en la composición de las Listas Nacionales de Medicamentos Esenciales de los 13 países. La proporción de Listas Nacionales de Medicamentos Esenciales que no son puestas al dia con regularidad era el doble que el global estimado por las Naciones Unidas. Los precios de las medicamentos recomendados por la lista de medicamentos esenciales de la OMS variaban grandemente entre medicamentos y para cada medicamento, dentro y entre países. En general, el uso de medicamentos de la Lista Nacional de Medicamentos Esenciales mejora la accesibilidad financiera y estos medicamentos deberían prescribirse preferentemente. Accessibility of medicines is a matter of great concern for health services all over the world, especially for less developed countries. It is an explicit target of the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals (United Nations 2008). WHO estimates that almost 2 billion people – one-third of the global population – do not have regular access to essential medicines, and in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) this is estimated at nearly half the population (WHO 2004a). Essential medicines are defined by WHO as 'those drugs that satisfy the health care needs of the majority of the population; they should, therefore, be available at all times in adequate amounts and in appropriate dosage forms, at a price the community can afford'. A model list – first assembled in 1977 and revised every 2 years since – gives member countries an example to adapt a National Essential Medicine List (NEML) according to the country's needs. These NEMLs are meant to help health authorities, especially in developing countries, to optimize pharmaceutical resources (Kindermans & Matthys 2001; Reidenberg 2007; United Nations 2008). However, according to the UN report, a large gap still exists in the availability of medicines in both the public and private sectors, as well as a wide variation in prices, which render essential medicines unaffordable to poor people (United Nations 2008). Limited access to medicines mainly affects adherence to long treatment diseases (Mendis et al. 2007). This is particularly the case for cardiovascular diseases (Elliott 1996; Fischer & Avorn 2004), specifically hypertension (Shulman et al. 1986). Hypertension in SSA places an increasing economic burden on the limited resources of these developing countries (Montgomery 1998; Cooper et al. 1998; Seedat 2007), not only because of treatment and management costs (Lindholm & Werko 1996; Pardell et al. 2000; Spurgeon 2004) but also because of loss of life associated with hypertension that occurs among adults of working age (Walker & Wadee 2000; Gaziano 2005). In the treatment of hypertension, medicine costs have been identified as the major determinant of cost of care (Odell & Gregory 1995; Dias da Costa et al. 2002), namely around 80% of the total cost of hypertension care within the first year of treatment (Shulman et al. 1986; Kaplan 1990). Although research has been undertaken in the Asia Pacific region (Balasubramaniam 1996) on prices of medicines used in communicable disease (Mugisha et al. 2002; Guimier et al. 2005; Gelders et al. 2006; Mendis et al. 2007; HAI 2008), independent studies evaluating the patient prices of antihypertensive drugs or comparing them with international price standards in SSA countries are scarce and sometimes limited to few drugs (HAI 2008) or just to one SSA country (Mendis et al. 2007). A very recent publication (Cameron et al. 2009b) draws attention to key barriers to access medicines: it discusses policy options to lower prices and improves treatment affordability by analysing reports from 36 countries including 10 from SSA, but only three antihypertensive drugs were on the analysed medicine list. The present survey had 3 aims: (i) to examine the availability of a NEML; (ii) to compare prices of antihypertensive medicines advocated by the WHO Essential Medicines List (WHO/EML) within and between SSA countries and (iii) to compare these prices with the 'International Drug Price Indicator Guide' (IDPIG) (MSH and WHO 2007) set by the Health Action International (HAI)/World Health Organization (WHO). The IDPIG is published by Management Sciences for Health (MSH) in collaboration with WHO and contains a spectrum of prices from pharmaceutical suppliers and/or buyers, international development organizations and government agencies. The survey was carried out from June to July 2007 in 13 SSA countries: Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Niger and Mozambique. We ascertained whether an NEML existed and the prices of antihypertensive medicines. All hypertension medicines advocated by the 15th WHO/EML (WHO 2007) were surveyed: amlodipine, atenolol, enalapril, hydralazine, hydrochlorothiazide and methyldopa. The survey also included advocated drugs from previous lists (12th–14th WHO/EML) (WHO 2003, 2004b, 2006), which were still used in more than half of the sampled countries (captopril, nifedipine). Data were collected by 13 local investigators (one correspondent investigator in each country). All investigators were either medical doctors working in the public sector (10 countries), or pharmacists working in the public sector (in countries: Rwanda, Uganda and DRC). All investigators received the instructions manual and report form prior to proceed to the data collection. They were asked to get the information on the existence and content of NEML from the Ministry of Health or National Pharmaceutical Office or governments' central medical stores. The prices for the patient of different medicines were collected from five public hospital pharmacies and five private pharmacies, randomly selected in the capital town of the country. To randomize, all existing pharmacies in every country capital city were listed by outlet (public or private), and a number was allocated to each. An external person was then asked to choose blindly five numbers in the public basket and five in the private basket. The prices were elicited according to WHO and HAI guidelines (WHO and HAI 2009), i.e., only generic medicines with known origin and original products could be included. All collected prices were converted into US Dollars with the national official rate of July 2007. Defined daily dose (DDD) prices were used to compare prices between medicines. DDD prices were calculated, based on DDDs given by the WHO Collaborating Centre for Drug Statistics Methodology database (WHO 2008). A price adjusted for standard of living, inflation or deflation was estimated by adjusting the DDD price for purchasing power parity (PPP)-based gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (World Bank 2007). Although no reliable official source was found in countries about the salary of the lowest-paid unskilled government worker (LPGW) advocated by WHO/HAI (WHO & HAI 2008) to estimate affordability, PPP-based GDP per capita adjusted price used in other surveys (Bloor et al. 1996; Cameron et al. 2009b) is also reasonable because like LPGW it takes into account the relative cost of living and the inflation rates of the countries (WHO & HAI 2008). Adjustment was performed to the country with the lowest PPP-based GDP per capita. This income-adjusted price allows comparison between the sampled countries and facilitates relative price interpretation. For every medicine in every country, minimum, median and maximum prices were identified. Descriptive analysis was performed on all data, and the influence of being on the NEML on the medicine price was analysed using the Mann–Whitney-U-test with α-significance set at 0.05. The median price of the five samples in the private and public sector, respectively, was calculated to compare prices in the private and the public sector and to compare those prices with corresponding median prices in the IDPIG. The current (2007) WHO/EML (WHO 2007) advises four first-line antihypertensive medicines from four classes: diuretics, β-blockers, angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and calcium channel blockers. The four medicines are hydrochlorothiazide, atenolol, enalapril and amlodipine. Other advocated antihypertensive drugs are methyldopa and hydralazine. Advocated antihypertensive drugs did not differ between the 2007 and the 2005 (WHO 2006) list. But in 2005, WHO/EML shifted from nifedipine sustained release to amlodipine and in 2003 from captopril to enalapril (WHO 2004a, 2006). Also in 2003, reserpine was dropped from the list. All 13 countries had a NEML. All medicines found in public pharmacies that are on the NEML are supplied from the Government's Central Medical Store. Table 1 shows the presence of medicines on the different NEMLs. No country had all four first-line medicines advocated by the 2007 WHO/EML on its NEML. When WHO/EML lists from 2002 (WHO 2003) on were taken into account, six countries had all four advocated first-line drugs on its NEML and six other countries had three on their NEML. These observations suggest a delay in the adaptation of the NEMLs. Indeed, five NEMLs had not been updated for 5 years. Of the other antihypertensive drugs, methyldopa was on the NEML in all 13 countries, while hydralazine was on nine of 13 NEMLs. Reserpine was advocated until 2002 and is still on the list of four countries. Although the short-acting nifedipine has been removed from the list in 2002, 11 of 13 countries still have it on their NEML. Table 1 also shows for each country the number of antihypertensive drugs aligned to the latest 2007 WHO/EML and aligned to the last four WHO/EMLs from 2002 through 2007. Our method resulted in 10 surveyed drug formulations. The overall median price in the 13 countries was always lower in the public than in the private sector (Table 2). The price variation expressed by the price high-low ratio is also lower in the public than in the private sector, except for atenolol (Table 3). Considering median prices in each country, in four cases, the median price in the private sector was double the public price or more: atenolol 50 mg in Burundi, atenolol 100 mg in Benin, hydralazine 25 mg in Uganda and hydrochlorothiazide 25 mg in Mozambique. However, we also found a few exceptions where the median price was slightly higher in the public than in the private sector: methyldopa 250 mg in Kenya, enalapril 5 mg in Ivory Coast and nifedipine sustained release 20 mg in Senegal. For all 10 investigated drug formulations, the overall median public and private prices in the 13 countries were higher than the corresponding median price reported by the IDPIG, with the biggest difference for enalapril, where the median public and private price was 22.5 and 34.8 times more expensive than the IDPIG price, respectively. This higher price in private as well as in public sector compared to the IDPIG price also holds in every surveyed country for three formulations (enalapril 5 mg, hydrochlorothiazide 25 mg and nifedipine sustained release 20 mg), in all but one country for hydrochlorothiazide 50 mg and in 11 countries for atenolol 50 mg and hydralazine 25 mg. To compare expenses of treatment between medicines, the price of the DDD per medicine was calculated using the median price of each medicine in the public pharmacies or in the private pharmacy if this price was lower. In the case of atenolol and hydrochlorothiazide, the lowest median price of the two formulations was used. Table 4 shows that hydrochlorothiazide was the cheapest treatment in nine of 13 countries, while this was atenolol in three countries (in Uganda equal to hydrochlorothiazide) and captopril in two countries. Enalapril was the most expensive treatment in all but one country. To compare the prices of drug treatments between countries, adjusted prices were calculated by adjusting all DDD prices for the PPP-based GDP per capita of DRC, the country with the lowest 2007 PPP-based GDP per capita. Based on the median of all income-adjusted prices in the 13 countries (Table 4), enalapril was by far the most expensive treatment, being 5.3 times more expensive than amlodipine, the second most expensive treatment. Hydrochlorothiazide is the most affordable, being 2.7 times cheaper than captopril, the second most affordable (Table 4). Adjusted medicine prices show that being on NEML reduces the cost of a medicine (Table 5). This was statistically significant for medicines on the current (2007) WHO/EML, and tended to be statistically significant for captopril and nifedipine sustained release, which were on the 2003 and 2002 WHO/EML, respectively. The cost of a treatment with a medicine, which is not on NEML, was on average 1.69 ± 0.44 (ranging from 1.27 to 2.61) times higher than the same medicine on the NEML. This study compared drugs on NEMLs in SSA countries with drugs advocated by the WHO/EML, investigated the impact of being listed on NEMLs on prices in SSA, and drug prices in 13 SSA countries as well as data on the most frequently used hypertensive drugs (10 formulations of eight drugs). All 13 countries had NEMLs, but none of these lists were in complete alignment with the 2007 WHO/EML, and 38% had not been updated in the last 5 years. Although reasons for this non-compliance were not investigated, studies in developing countries suggest political will, insufficiency of human resources or funding and conflict of interests (Hughes & Fiander 1989; Courtois & Dumoulin 1995; Bloor et al. 1996; Balasubramaniam 1996; Turshen 2001; Anis et al. 2003; Aaserud et al. 2006). The number of out-of-date NEMLs is double the UN report estimates of 19% of developing countries who need to establish an EML or update an existing one (United Nations 2008). Outdated NEMLs may handicap medicine access and standardization of hypertension management in sub-Saharan countries. Listing of medicines on NEMLs favours their use but does not mean that they are more often prescribed by physicians. However, as we showed that NEML drugs are cheaper, their listing on NEML is a powerful tool on price reduction and control and may increase their use. The patient price of medicines largely differs between countries for each drug and between drugs in each country. In the majority of countries, hydrochlorothiazide was the cheapest drug. In low- and middle-income countries, limited access to medicines is mainly because of two factors (Smith & Tickell 2003): poor availability and relatively high cost (Quick et al. 2002; WHO and HAI 2009; Mendis et al. 2007). Our study confirms others (WHO 1999; Quick et al. 2005) showing that appearance of a medicine on the NEML lowers its price. Of the many factors that can influence drug price, three are especially important: (i) mode of procurement and existence of local manufacturers (supplier, travel distances, custom fees and other taxes); (ii) patent issues and (iii) existence of the medical insurances or government subsidiaries if the drug is on the NEML (Perez-Casas et al. 2001; Levison & Laing 2003; Linjer et al. 2005). If a medicine appears on the NEML, the add-on costs are greatly reduced as taxes and custom fees are lowered, suppliers are carefully chosen, and medicine prices are subsidized (Levison & Laing 2003). None of the 13 investigated countries has a mandatory social security or a national inclusive medical insurance covering the whole population (Annemans et al. 1997). However, there are community-based, district-based or national medical insurances with a co-payment method. Within this system, the patient has to pay a small fraction of the medicine price as 'own/individual contribution', ranging from 0% (as in Uganda for referred patient prescriptions) to 25%, the remainder being subsidized by medical insurance. The co-payment system has a positive impact on price reduction. Complete or partial absence of a social security emphasizes the need for a NEML, which provides more affordable drugs. Although the WHO/EML is updated every 2 years, a government can decide not to follow the latest WHO/EML because of a more affordable drug in the same class. This may be the case for keeping captopril on the NEML, which was overall 26.0 times (income-adjusted DDD price difference) less expensive than enalapril, the ACE inhibitor advocated by the latest WHO/EML. Nevertheless, because of the frequent change of drug prices, as in case of patent expiry, governments should be encouraged to consider updating the NEML each time a new version of the WHO/EML appears to guarantee maximal affordability of drugs. We found that five NEMLs had not been updated for 5 years, which caused older antihypertensives, which had been superseded by short-acting nifedipine to remain on the NEML. The majority of patient prices of medicines in this survey were higher than the corresponding buyer prices of the IDPIG. This finding may be in line with other authors (Laing 1991; Mallet et al. 2001; Levison & Laing 2003) who found that prices of medicines in most SSA countries are well above their production costs (Richards 1986; Richard 2004; Ewen & Dey 2007) and that the profits of those in the distribution chain (pharmacists, dispensing doctors, wholesalers and even some governments) are frequently high. The UN report (United Nations 2008) estimates that in the public sector, generic medicines cost on average 250% more than the international reference price and in the private sector, those same medicines cost on average about 650% more than the international reference price. After exclusion of the outlier enalapril, in the present survey, patient prices of sampled antihypertensive medicines were even more expensive than estimated by the UN report, being on average 313% and 745% higher than international reference prices in the public and private sector, respectively. Like IDPIG, the present study showed that absolute patient prices and variation in prices in private pharmacies are in general higher than in public pharmacies. This can be explained by the fact that only public pharmacies are involved in the NEML program to provide more affordable drugs. However, in the present study, the difference between public and private pharmacy prices was smaller than what has been reported by HAI in the 'Medicine price monitor' monitoring three pilot countries : Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania (HAI 2008). In the private sector, pharmacies and outlets are often poorly regulated, making the prices higher than in the public sector. However, in Kenya, the price of atenolol and hydralazine was lower in the private than in the public sector. This may be linked to the competition between several local manufacturers and import/export companies, which suggests also a potentially important role for local manufacturing in increasing the accessibility of medicines. Furthermore, establishing an authority to continuously monitor prices, availability, affordability and linked components, might minimize prices fluctuations and help increasing health care access in SSA. International guidelines advise diuretics and calcium channel blockers as preferred drugs in blacks (Mancia et al. 2007). The diuretic hydrochlorothiazide was the best affordable in a majority of countries and in the 13 countries as a whole, being 2.6 times less expensive than the second most affordable drug captopril and 13.2 times less expensive than amlodipine. This means that for the cost of treating one patient with amlodipine, at least 13 patients can be treated with hydrochlorothiazide. Hence, hydrochlorothiazide should be, in line with previous reports (Helgeland et al. 1986; Philipp et al. 1997; Mayor 2003), the first drug to be considered. Therefore, sustained efforts should be made to provide hydrochlorothiazide at the best affordable price (Jayasinghe et al. 2003; Spurgeon 2004), especially in those countries where the price of hydrochlorothiazide is high, such as Cameroon and DRC. A chronic use of thiazide diuretics can lead to metabolic disturbances. However, the use of low doses (e.g. not exceeding 25 mg daily of hydrochlorothiazide), even for a longer period, is normally well tolerated (Waller & Ramsay 1989). Therefore, from a public health perspective, control of urates, potassium and blood glucose may not be obligatory up to 25 mg of hydrochlorothiazide per day). Because of their low cost, thiazide diuretics are important baseline drugs in the treatment of hypertension. The shift from captopril to enalapril and nifedipine long acting to amlodipine made in WHO/EML may not be appropriate for some low-income countries. Yet the advocated drugs are long acting and may increase treatment compliance since they are given once daily, but they may not be affordable in several developing countries. In most countries, treatment with enalapril was the most expensive one, ranging from 7.2 to 250 times more expensive than a treatment with hydrochlorothiazide in Burundi and Rwanda, respectively. We adjusted medicine prices for PPP-based GDP per capita to estimate drugs affordability. However, the WHO/HAI recommended method, used in several other reports, is the salary of the LPGW (WHO & HAI 2008; Cameron et al. 2009b). Discussions and criticism are very often raised about using LPGW to estimate affordability (Niens & Brouwer 2009). The reality is that in many SSA countries a substantial proportion of the population earns less than this amount. Further, the need for other non-discretionary expenditures (e.g., food or housing), seasonal fluctuations in income, the number of dependants who live on this wage and the full costs of treatment are not accounted for. In addition, it would be very interesting to know country by country the proportion of the population able to afford a complete treatment of a chronic disease. However, this requires economic modelling with many assumptions, such as which proportion of the salary can be spent, the composition of the household and the number of drugs to be used to control the disease. These data are not readily available and therefore we decided not to proceed with such approach. Given the complex nature of affordability, multiple measures are valuable in gaining a robust understanding of this concept as it applies to medicine costs (Cameron et al. 2009a,b). Because of the complexity and size of the problem of hypertension in SSA, the main limitations of our survey lie in what was not assessed rather than what was investigated. As the outlets surveyed were chosen in each country from the capital city, data from distanced rural areas could change according to transport add-ons. The survey was limited to drugs on NEMLs, which were on the WHO/EML between 2002 and 2007. Prices of other non-antihypertensive drugs on NEMLs were not analysed. The present study ignored the price data from informal channels, such as street vendors, which should interact with the prices in SSA countries. Apart from the price, the quality of medicines is also of utmost importance in treatment. However, the quality of medicine was out of scope of the present manuscript. Another limitation may be related to the use of the IDPIG as a price reference. The IDPIG has been advocated as the most useful reference standard given its wide availability, frequent updates and fair stability over time (WHO & HAI 2008; Cameron et al. 2009b). It has also claimed to represent actual procurement prices for medicines offered to low-income and middle-income countries by non-profit suppliers and international tender prices (Cameron et al. 2009b). Nevertheless, it may be criticized as it is based on a limited number of data for some medicines. Finally in this manuscript, the prices discussed are prices for monotherapy. But this does not necessarily reflect the cost of the management of hypertension because a patient with established hypertension regularly requires more than one antihypertensive drug and often also other cardioprotective drugs like acetylsalicylic acid or statins. Additionally, the present study is descriptive and not explanatory. It was not possible to analyse the reason of price disparities because the price components were not investigated due to logistical limitations and/or governmental sensitivity in delivering such information. However, the results of this survey show the picture of real patient prices of antihypertensive medicines and NEMLs in SSA countries and highlight the role NEMLs can play in regulating medicine prices in SSA. In contrast to previous studies (Balasubramaniam 1996; Mendis et al. 2007; HAI 2008; Cameron et al. 2009a), data were collected independently rather than through government surveys. Our conclusions, though in line with others published earlier, are more robust than previous reports. In conclusion, all surveyed SSA countries have a NEML that partially aligns with WHO/EDL. There are substantial between country differences in NEML. Prices of drugs advised by WHO/EDL differ largely between drugs and for each drug within and between countries. Use of NEML drugs is likely to improve financial accessibility of care in SSA countries. The proportion of NEMLs that need updating was double the UN report estimate. Governments should be encouraged to consider updating the NEML each time a new version of the WHO/EML appears to guarantee maximal accessibility of drugs. In general, hydrochlorothiazide is the most affordable drug and should be the drug to be considered first. Sustained efforts should be made to provide hydrochlorothiazide at the best affordable price. This survey adds to what is known about access-to-medicines patterns in developing countries. Such information is key when setting up a public health policy or taking a decision on treatment delivery for hypertension. Our findings are relevant especially in areas where – like in SSA – hypertension and other cardiovascular diseases are nowadays rapidly increasing because of demographic changes and urbanization. The information given will help clinicians and other health professionals to make decisions in treatment delivery especially in settings where patient purchasing power is limited. We thank all local physicians and pharmacists who voluntarily contributed to the collecting of medicine price data, as well as all contacts within Government's Central Medical Store in the sampled countries for their contribution.