Degree
Master of Business Administration Executive
Faculty / School
Faculty of Business Administration (FBA)
Year of Award
2016
Project Type
MBA Executive Research Project
Access Type
Restricted Access
Executive Summary
Inequality in the access to medicine has been the biggest problem in the resource poor countries. Due to poverty majority of the population is unable to afford medical treatment and only a small proportion of the population has availability of health insurance unlike advanced societies where the medical expenses are reimbursable by the government or the insurance companies. Similarly Pakistan is a society where the patients have to pay out of pocket for their medical expenses. The cost of treatment of a common disease like fever or flu is somewhat affordable but in case of life threatening diseases like Cancer, Tuberculosis, Hepatitis etc. the expenses are unbearable because of the high cost of treatment and medication. Majority of the lifesaving drugs are extremely expensive coming out of recent research of major multinational companies, these drugs are out of reach of most of the patients with relatively low income levels. The medical specialists are eager to prescribe these expensive medicines to the patients as the traditional therapies are not providing the required remedy and also have more side effects. So in order to improve the access of these drugs to relatively less privileged patients, there is a strong need to have some innovative solution where manufacturing companies along with other charitable organizations and even NGOs pitch in and collaborate for the betterment of the poor patients.
In this regard, we after taking feedbacks from alt the relevant stakeholders have come up with an innovative plan of launching a program which is not only effective but also sustainable in long term to ensure smooth supply of targeted medicines to patients with relatively less resources. In this program, there will be a mechanism of assessing the patient's financial status based on his/her income, assets and standard of living. The patients will pay partially based on his/ her financial ability and the rest of the medicine will be provided through the support of manufacturing companies, charitable organizations like Baitul Mall or other NGOs. In this regard we will develop and implement a tool for the financial eligibility testing of patients and thereby improve access of expensive lifesaving drugs to the patients.
Pages
60
Link to Catalog Record
https://ils.iba.edu.pk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=56211
Recommended Citation
Qayyum, M. M. (2016). Improving access of expensive life-saving drugs to patients with limited financial resources (Unpublished graduate research project). Institute of Business Administration, Pakistan. Retrieved from https://ir.iba.edu.pk/research-projects-emba/184
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