Antiepileptic Drug Prices, Availability and Affordability in a Resource-Limited Setting.

Background: The availability and affordability of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) are critical to the success of public health initiatives enabling care for people with epilepsy in the community.

Objective: To pilot survey the availability and affordability of AEDs in the community.

Methods: Field workers used standard WHO-Health Action International approaches and collected data on the availability of, and maximum retail prices of originator brands and least price generics of AEDs in 46 randomly selected public ( = 29), private ( = 8), and charitable ( = 9) pharmacy outlets. Median price ratios were computed apropos international reference prices of corresponding medications and affordability gauged with reference to daily wage of lowest paid worker.

Results: Only 10 outlets (7 - private, 3 - public, and none - charitable) stocked at least one essential AED. Median price ratios varied between 1.1 and 1.5 essentially reflecting the difference between the least price generics and originator brands. Of note, carbamazepine-retard, 200 mg put up the slightest difference in prices of originator and least price generic brands and also was the most affordable AED.

Conclusions: The availability and affordability of most AEDs were poor and hence, this needs to be studied on a wider scale and thereafter efforts to improve both the availability and affordability are desirable in order to address the huge treatment gap for epilepsy in India.