Análise do acesso a medicamentos por usuários da Atenção Primária

Abstract

Medicines’ access occurs through four variables: their availability, their geographical accessibility, people's purchasing capacity and acceptability. The present study aimed to analyze medicines’ access by users of primary health care in the city of Piraquara - PR in order to understand the difficulties and facilities of the access to medicines provided by the Unified Health System (SUS) in this city. A cross-section study was carried out using interviews with users of the primary health care in the city from may 2020 to august 2020. The results obtained showed that 46.7% withdraw medication in both primary and secondary care services, and 29.6% withdraw medication only in primary care service, with 68.2% of these accessing this service on foot. The difficulties most raised by the interviewed population to acquire medication and access the medications were distance, the lack of medication available in the system, the infrastructure to get to the place and the purchase of medications in the private system. It was possible to realize with the study that medicines’ access is not only the availability of these medicines and that the improvement of the service must be continuous.