Medicines price competition in rural Kyrgyzstan has unexpected results

Posted on 4 January 2010

A paper recently published in Equity Health Journal examines medicines price competition that ensued in a rural village in Kyrgyzstan after the opening of a small network of non-profit pharmacies created and managed by an NGO.

While the rural pharmacies were created to increase access to medicines in villages where no pharmacies existed, the project had unexpected, substantial spillover effects, spurring medicines price reductions in pharmacies quite far away.

These rural pharmacies were established with very little investment and lots of social capital. The case study provides a positive example of collaboration between community members, international organisations, the government, and an NGO. The project also demonstrates the potential to leverage competition as a means of increasing access to medicines in rural regions.

The research was possible due to the availability of insurance claims data and highlights the utility of this type of data in analysing impacts of policies and projects on access to medicines.

Read the full article