Applying a health system perspective to the evolving Farmácia Popular medicines access programme in Brazil

The Farmácia Popular Program (FPP) launched a subsidy system for medicines in Brazil. This paper aims to analyse the FPP under a health systems perspective considering the different health system levels. Patient share of copayment increased with the implementation of the intervention, which decreased the reference price and decreased with SNP (Saúde Não Tem Preço; zero copayment policy for patients). Despite the improvement on control mechanism, fraud remained a problem. FPP has proven to be a very important policy for promoting access to medicines for hypertension and diabetes in Brazil. Examining this policy from a health system perspective has allowed the paper to highlight many of its important consequences, including for the first time a broad and consistent information system on access to medicines in the country

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Luiza VL, Chaves LA, Campos MR, Bertoldi AD, Silva RM, Bigdeli M et al. Applying a health system perspective to the evolving Farmácia Popular medicines access programme in Brazil. BMJ Global Health. 2018;2(Suppl 3): e000547. doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2017-000547