Abstract
The outbreak of COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) pandemic has had a huge impact on countless aspects in people’s lives since the pandemic started late 2019. The global lockdowns and the restrictions on travel movement had led to curtailing of imports of general and essential medicines and medical supplies with many pharmaceutical manufacturing firms shifting their focus to the production of medicines and medical equipment targeted at the fight against COVID-19, rather than general medicines production. This has left a huge gap for pharmaceutical imports that aim to treat other chronic diseases. As a result, access to medicines for both acute and chronic health conditions has been reduced, and this has led to an increased rate of health complications because of suboptimal management.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the difficulties inherent in not having a reliable sustainable global medicines-supply chain that could reduce the negative impact of similar crises on the lives of patients who rely of uninterrupted supplies of life-saving pharmaceuticals. This chapter provides an overview of the medicines issues facing the population from the COVID-19 pandemic, discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on access to vaccines, pharmaceuticals for acute and chronic conditions, and the role of pharmacists in the pandemic, and provides a discussion of the challenges, opportunities, and recommendations facing patients, health professionals, and policymakers now and in the future, as a result of the pandemic.
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Kheir, N., Chan, A., Scahill, S., Beyene, K. (2022). COVID-19 and Medicines Access. In: Encyclopedia of Evidence in Pharmaceutical Public Health and Health Services Research in Pharmacy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50247-8_108-1
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