Price and affordability of key essential medicines for children in Sri Lanka, a lower-middle-income country: comparison of two national cross-sectional surveys done 8 years apart.

Objective: To describe the price and affordability of key essential medicines for children in the private sector in Sri Lanka in 2017/2018, and compare the findings with 2009 data.

Design: National cross-sectional descriptive survey using the WHO/Health Action International medicine price methodology.

Setting And Participants: Data were collected from a representative sample of 54 private sector pharmacies selected from all 9 provinces in Sri Lanka using a multistage clustered approach.