De Apenrots Stage op het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken

Krioelend uit allerlei hoeken en gaten stromen ze samen. Uit hun oortjes klinkt muziek en hun handen zijn gevuld met kranten en/of koffie. Alsof ze afgesproken hebben collectief wakker te worden, zo staan ze op het perron. Wanneer het zoemende geluid sterker wordt verdelen de grijs of blauw getinte kostuums zich. Om de 6 á 8 meter scholen ze samen in kleine groepjes. Luttele seconden later klinkt het sissen van deuren. Opgeslokt door het gele monster wordt de menigte meegevoerd. Bestemming: een van de locaties waar de leden van deze groep hun invloed uitoefenen

Practical measurement of affordability: an application to medicines

Objective: To develop two practical methods for measuring the affordability of medicines in developing countries. Methods The proposed methods - catastrophic and impoverishment methods - rely on easily accessible aggregated expenditure data and take into account a country's income distribution and absolute level of income. The catastrophic method quantifies the proportion of the population whose resources would be catastrophically reduced by spending on a given medicine; the impoverishment method estimates the proportion of the population that would be pushed below the poverty line by procuring a given medicine. These methods are illustrated by calculating the afford ability of glibenclamide, an antidiabetic drug, in India and Indonesia. The results were validated by comparing them with the results obtained by using household micro data for India and Indonesia. Findings when accurate aggregate data are available, the proposed methods offer a practical way to obtain informative and accurate estimates of affordability. Their results are very similar to those obtained with household micro data analysis and are easily compared across countries. Conclusion The catastrophic and impoverishment methods, based on macro data, can provide a suitable estimate of medicine affordability when the household level micro data needed to carry out more sophisticated studies are not available. Their usefulness depends on the availability of accurate aggregated data