ABSTRACT
Pharmaceutical productions are recognized as an essential commodity in the economical literature; therefore, an increase in their prices leads to an increase in the household budget. Currently, about 15-20% of the entire health expenditure in Iran is allocated to the pharmaceutical sector. This study aimed to investigate the effect of inflation and its uncertainty on inflation in pharmaceutical prices in Iran. In this study, the monthly time series of consumer price index from 2001 to 2017 was used to calculate inflation uncertainty based on a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model. Hylleberg-Engle-Granger-Yoo test was performed to determine the stationary of the data. Feasibility tests were also used to explore the application of Autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity family models to these data. The causal relationship between inflation uncertainty and inflation in the pharmaceutical sector was investigated using the Granger causality test. A causal relationship was found between inflation and inflation uncertainty at the 95% confidence interval for the monthly data during the study. It was revealed that Inflation uncertainty did not affect the inflation in the pharmaceutical prices, but inflation can be a cause of pharmaceutical inflation. Although inflation uncertainty has no association with pharmaceutical inflation, it seems that it could affect pharmaceutical inflation through inflation in other sectors. Therefore, adopting appropriate monetary policies aimed at controlling liquidity and inflation can effectively control pharmaceutical prices.
ABSTRACT
Objective: Abortion related procedures contribute to a significant economic burden because it resulted in prolonged hospital stays for patients. We aimed to gather available evidence on the economic burden of abortion and post-abortion complication treatment cares worldwide. Materials and methods: PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Embase databases were searched through November 2019. Two researchers independently conducted the quality assessment and data extraction process. The latest web-based tool adjusted the estimates of costs expressed in one specific currency and price year into a specific target currency (the year 2016 $US). Results: Totally, 2082 records were retrieved and 32 studies were deemed eligible for qualitative synthesis. The mean total costs per patient with abortion or post-abortion care ranged from $23 to $564. The annual costs ranged from 189,000 $US to 134 million $US. Conclusion: Abortion and post-abortion care impose a substantial economic burden on society. Understanding the burdensome of abortion or pregnancy termination among policymakers provides vital information and enables informed decisions to be made to establish health care priorities and allocating scarce resources.
