Medicines and the third world

International trade data is used to examine expenditure on imports of medicinal and pharmaceuticalproducts in less developed countries. There are wide variations between countries in expenditure per head on medicines and in expenditure per physician. Medicines expenditure, largely for curative rather than preventive purposes, has been a rising proportion of total health expenditure in most third world countries. Rates of growth of expenditure on medicines were very much faster than rates of growth of gross national product and this cannot be long sustained.