ArticleJournal of pharmaceutical policy and practice2020
To evaluate the impact of opening up ownership of pharmacies in South Africa.
Article in Journal of pharmaceutical policy and practice, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Pharmacists' Professional Satisfaction and Challenges: A Netnographic Analysis of Reddit and Facebook Discussions.Pharmacy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- The South African community pharmacy sector-an untapped reservoir for delivering HIV services.Frontiers in reproductive health · 2023Article
- A Review on Pharmacy Practice in South Africa-A Higher Education Perspective.Pharmacy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundFollowing the democratic elections in 1994 the South African private pharmaceutical services were mostly in metropolitan centred with a scattering of pharmacies in less densely populated areas. The Government introduced regulations relating to the ownership and licensing of pharmacies on the 25th of April 2003 to improve access to pharmaceutical services by removing ownership restriction to only pharmacists.
objectiveTo assess the outcomes of the policy implementation in improving access to pharmacies.
methodThe register of pharmacies at the South African Pharmacy Council was analysed from 1994 to 2014. Each registration was assigned GPS coordinates using Q-GIS(V3.6) and mapped per province at a district level, following clean-up and verification of the register. New registrations were also categorised as either corporate or independent pharmacy. Population census was obtained from Statistics South Africa and used to determine the number of pharmacies per 100,000 population.
main outcome measuresNumber of active pharmacies; Number of independent pharmacies; number of pharmacies in each district.
resultsThe number of active pharmacies increased from 1624 at the end of 2003 to 3021 by 2014. The closure rate decreased from 137 to 86 pharmacies per year post regulations, a 37.23% reduction with a net gain of approximately 127 pharmacies per year. About 38.30% of all pre-2003 pharmacies (622 of 1624) closed by 2014. The population increase in the study period was approximately 20.66% but the overall growth of pharmacies was only 1.88 pharmacies per 100,000 population (3.55 to 5.43). Following the regulations in 2004, 23.9% of pharmacies active within the system closed between 2004 and 2014, of which, 91.7% of them were independent pharmacies.
conclusionOpening up of pharmacy ownership in South Africa increased the number of pharmacies in the country but did not result in increased access in previously less populated areas. There was still clustering of pharmacies in a well resourced areas, with a steady growth in corporate pharmacy (35%) ownership.
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