Abstract
Background: Countries across Africa and Asia have introduced a variety of measures to prevent and treat COVID-19 with medicines and personal protective equipment (PPE). However, there has been considerable controversy surrounding some treatments including hydroxychloroquine where the initial hype and misinformation led to shortages, price rises and suicides. Price rises and shortages were also seen for PPE. Such activities can have catastrophic consequences especially in countries with high co-payment levels. Consequently, there is a need to investigate this further. Objective: Assess changes in utilisation, prices, and shortages of pertinent medicines and PPE among African and Asian countries since the start of pandemic. Our approach: Data gathering among community pharmacists to assess changes in patterns from the beginning of March until principally the end of May 2020. In addition, suggestions on ways to reduce misinformation. Results: One hundred and thirty one pharmacists took part building on the earlier studies across Asia. There were increases in the utilisation of principally antimalarials (hydroxychloroquine) and antibiotics (azithromycin) especially in Nigeria and Ghana. There were limited changes in Namibia and Vietnam reflecting current initiatives to reduce inappropriate prescribing and dispensing of antimicrobials. Encouragingly, there was increased use of vitamins/immune boosters and PPE across the countries where documented. In addition, generally limited change in the utilisation of herbal medicines. However, shortages have resulted in appreciable price increases in some countries although moderated in others through government initiatives. Suggestions in Namibia going forward included better planning and educating patients. Conclusion: Encouraging to see increases in the utilisation of vitamins/immune boosters and PPE. However, concerns with increased utilisation of antimicrobials needs addressing alongside misinformation, unintended consequences from the pandemic and any appreciable price rises. Community pharmacists and patient organisations can play key roles in providing evidence-based advice, helping moderate prices through improved stock management, and helping address unintended consequences of the pandemic.
Highlights
We have recently published regarding ongoing activities across Africa to prevent and treat COVID-19 (Ogunleye et al, 2020)
We adopted a similar comprehensive strategy applied in Bangladesh (Haque et al, 2020a), and subsequently used among other Asian countries (Godman et al, 2020a; Haque et al, 2020b), building on previous knowledge of activities across Africa just before and after the first cases of COVID-19 were identified in Africa (Ogunleye et al, 2020)
There was an increase in the utilisation of antimalarials among all the African
Summary
We have recently published regarding ongoing activities across Africa to prevent and treat COVID-19 (Ogunleye et al, 2020). Vietnam aggressively introduced a range of measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 under the banner “Fighting the epidemic is like fighting again’t the enemy,” which together with other factors resulted in only 383 reported cases by 19 July and no deaths (Godman et al, 2020a; Jones, 2020; Pham et al, 2020; WHO, 2020a). This increased to 1,069 cases by 27 September and only 35 reported deaths (Godman et al, 2020a; WHO, 2020b).
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