Apart from the availability of drug sources, the village drug provision profile can be characterized by drugs available in the village. Two aspects of drug availability are discussed here; the total number of item/brand names, referred to as range of drugs, and their pharmacological types.

Range of drugs

The range of drugs available in each village, measured by the total number of brand names available, indicates the width of drug choices of the people in the village and reflects the drug consumption behaviour of the community. Data from Table 6 reveal that 47% of the villages have a total number of available brand names of more than 40. The provincial or regional differences are considerable; Chaiyapoom (CP) in the Northeast leads the way with 50% of the villages having a total number of brand names of more than 80; on the contrary, Prajinburi (PJ) has only 4.2% of the villages with more than 80 brand names but in this case 50% of the villages have between 41 and 60 brand names. It should be noted that there are 13 villages (6.7%) that have more than 100 brand names per village; among them, four are in Chaiyapoom (CP). On the contrary, more than 60% of villages in Mukdahan(MH) in the Northeast, and Chumporn (CPN) and Songkla(SK) in the South have a drug range of less than 41 brand names.

Table 6: Distribution of villages (in %) with different drug range by province

The village drug range is also strongly related to village size. Data in Table 6-A (Annex 1) show that the majority of villages with 100 households or less have not more than 60 drug items; while 54% of villages with 150 households or more have more than 60 items. None in this last group has less than 20 items. The same kind of relation can be observed between drug range and number of groceries in villages as shown in Table 7-A (Annex 1). Considering the association with village location measured by the distance between villages and the nearest town or health facilities, data in Table 8-A (Annex 1) seem to indicate that villages with a wider drug range are those located at a greater distance from town. However, the direction of the relation is inconclusive regarding the variables of distance of villages from hospitals and from drug-stores (see Table 9-A and 10-A, Annex 1).

Types of drugs

The pharmacological types of drugs, like the drug range, indicate the variety of drug choices of the villagers, but do so in a different manner. Drug types reflect the rationality of drug use of the community more directly. In addition, availability of different types of drugs in a certain community can also refer to perceived health needs which then indicate the morbidity pattern of the community.

Among the total of 25,514 drug items² collected from groceries and VDFs in 195 sample villages, it was found that 82.6% are modern drugs and 20% of the total classifiable modern ones are prescription drugs³. Within the group of over-the-counter drugs⁴, common drugs such as those for skin diseases, balm, ear or eye drop, and other external use drugs predominate. Analgesics and antipyretics, anti-cough and cold drugs (i.e. a combination of paracetamol and antihistamine preparations), and antacid and anti-ulcer drugs also form a major proportion. Among the prescription drugs, antibiotics form the biggest proportion, followed by anti-inflammatory drugs and antidiarrhoeals (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Distribution of available drugs in 195 villages by pharmacological types

Traditional drugs form only 17.4% of the total number of items. Provincial differences vary between Mukdahan province in the Northeast where the proportion of traditional drugs is by far the lowest (5.8%) and other provinces whose range is from 15.5 to 23.6%. For the prescription drugs, two provinces from the Northeast, Mukdahan and Chaiyapoom, lead the group with a prevalence of 23.1% and 22.3% respectively, as compared to between 15 to 20% in other areas.

The extent to which certain types of drugs are available and distributed in the studied villages is elaborated in Table 7. From the data, it can be concluded that all kinds of drugs: prescription, non-prescription and traditional drugs, are obtainable at the village level in almost all of the villages. Among the prescription drugs, antibiotics are the most widely available. Antibiotics were found in all 195 villages except five. Anti-inflammatory drugs and corticosteroids, both of which are supposed to be sold only with prescription, have been found in 118 and 84 villages (60.5 and 43.2%) respectively.

Table 7: Percentage of villages by province where types of drugs have been found

In conclusion, the village drug provision profiles in the studied villages can be characterized as reflecting plentifulness, both in term of sources (specifically groceries), and availability of drugs. This is the context in which the VHVs/VHCs and VDFs have been working.