Investigating the Impact of Socio-Economic Factors on Availability and the Affordability of Cancer Patients to Pay for Prescribed Medicines

Cancer is always one of the major causes of death among patients, and providing affordable and effective medicines that are accessible to patients is one of the most important goals of health systems. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the key factors affecting the availability of medicines and the cancer patients’ affordability in pharmacies in Khorramabad, Iran.

This is cross-sectional descriptive-analytic study in 2022, In this study, pharmacies were considered as clusters, and then 96 prescriptions of cancer patients visiting pharmacies in the urban areas of Khorramabad were simple randomly selected for examination., data analysis was performed using SPSS software (version 21).

The results of this study showed that more than half of the patients were reasonably satisfied with the availability of their prescribed medications in pharmacies. However, due to their income and economic situation, they were unable to afford the cost of medications. The most important socio-economic factor affecting access and financial ability to pay for prescribed medicines was the individuals’ level of income. However, in groups with relatively high incomes, the financial ability to pay for prescribed medicines was relatively low.

Since income is a significant factor in the financial ability to pay for cancer medicines, to enhance the productivity of health policies, health policymakers should allocate the necessary subsidies to medicines or increase insurance coverage for these medicines.