Analysis of access to hypertensive and diabetic drugs in the Family Health Strategy, State of Pernambuco, Brazil

• Main Authors: Maria Nelly Sobreira de Carvalho Barreto, Eduarda Ângela Pessoa Cesse, Rodrigo Fonseca Lima, Michelly Geórgia da Silva Marinho, Yuri da Silva Specht, Eduardo Maia Freese de Carvalho, Annick Fontbonne
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Associação Brasileira de Pós-Graduação em Saúde Coletiva 2015-06-01
• Series: Revista Brasileira de Epidemiologia
• Subjects: Sistema Único de Saúde; Atenção Primária à Saúde; Acesso aos Serviços de Saúde; Diabetes Mellitus; Hipertensão; Uso de medicamentos
• Online Access: http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1415-790X2015000200413&lng=en&tlng=en

<sec><title>OBJECTIVE:</title><p> To evaluate the access to drugs for hypertension and diabetes and the direct cost of buying them among users of the Family Health Strategy (FHS) in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil.</p></sec><sec><title>METHODS:</title><p> Population-based, cross-sectional study of a systematic random sample of 785 patients with hypertension and 823 patients with diabetes mellitus who were registered in 208 randomly selected FHS teams in 35 municipalities of the state of Pernambuco. The selected municipalities were classified into three levels with probability proportional to municipality size (LS, large-sized; MS, medium-sized; SS, small-sized). To verify differences between the cities, we used the χ² test.</p></sec><sec><title>RESULTS:</title><p> Pharmacological treatment was used by 91.2% patients with hypertension whereas 85.6% patients with diabetes mellitus used oral antidiabetic drugs (OADs), and 15.4% used insulin. The FHS team itself provided antihypertensive medications to 69.0% patients with hypertension, OADs to 75.0% patients with diabetes mellitus, and insulin treatment to 65.4%. The 36.9% patients with hypertension and 29.8% with diabetes mellitus that had to buy all or part of their medications reported median monthly cost of R$ 18.30, R$ 14.00, and R$ 27.61 for antihypertensive drugs, OADs, and insulin, respectively.</p></sec><sec><title>CONCLUSION:</title><p> It is necessary to increase efforts to ensure access to these drugs in the primary health care network.</p></sec>