DRUG-UTILIZATION STUDY ON CURACAO

The drug use on Curacao was evaluated with the help of the prescriptio n forms of twelve community pharmacies at Curacao over a period of thr ee months, The emphasis of the study was on three therapeutic groups: the systemic antibiotics, the psycholeptics and the anti-inflammatory and antirheumatic drugs. Within the group of systemic antibiotics broa d-spectrum antibiotics were very frequently prescribed compared with t he small-spectrum penicillins. The consumption of psycholeptics, parti cularly benzodiazepines, on Curacao is remarkably low in comparison wi th drug utilization data of Denmark and the Netherlands. In contrast, the number of defined daily doses per 1,000 persons per day of antirhe umatic drugs is higher compared with data from these two countries. Wi thin the analysed groups, large differences occur between the two most important kinds of insurance, i.c., the poor people (PP) and social i nsurance bank (SVB) insurance. The PP-insured patients consume in the case of antibiotics and antirheumatic drugs almost twice as many and i n the case of psycholeptics even five times as many as the SVB-insured patients do. A few calculations of prices prove that the extra amount of drugs consumed by PP-insured has important financial consequences.