Worldwide Access to Essential Medication for Pediatric Cancer
December 7, 2018
Researchers, through a survey sent out to pediatric oncologists around the globe, have developed a worldwide map of access to scarce chemotherapeutics. In this study, chemotherapeutics in the WHO Essential Medicines List for Children were queried. From this, each country’s average comparative availability was quantified as relative access score.
Results from this experiment concluded that 42.9% of respondents living in low-income countries received suboptimal access scores. Additionally, 42.1% of patients from these areas lack full access to chemotherapy options. This study was the first of its kind to examine global disparities in access to pediatric chemotherapy and develop an estimate of access pertaining to disease specific drug packages.
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