Abstract:

Background: In 2020, there were 2.3millions of woman diagnosed with breast cancer globally. In Tanzania and other East African countries little is documented regarding to availability and sources of financing anticancer to breast cancer patients. Also, it’s not known if the anticancer medicine prescribed at BMC hospital are available for the patients. Availability and sources of financing anticancer medicine to breast cancer patients is low in low- and middle-income countries compared to high income countries. The study aimed to evaluate the availability of anticancer medicine and to determine sources of financing anticancer medicine to breast cancer patients attending chemotherapy clinic at Bugando Medical Centre.

Methodology: This was descriptive cross- sectional study and was conducted at Oncology department clinic at Bugando Medical Centre. In and out patients diagnosed with breast cancer and undergoing chemotherapy clinic and are able to speak English or Swahili language was included in this study. Sample size was determined by kish-Leslie formula. Data collection was done by using semi- structured questionnaires and checklist was used. Data collected was cleaned by Microsoft excel and analysed by using SPSS version 20.

Result: Availability of anticancer medicine is high to private pharmacy of about 99.99% and low to public pharmacy of 46.15% of total surveyed medicine. 86.30% of patients purchase their medication either by insurance or cash while 13.7% of patients received medicine for free.
 
Conclusion: Availability of anticancer medicine was high to private pharmacy than public pharmacy at Bugando medical Centre. Patients with insurance had no difficult in accessing and affording anticancer medicine. Therefore, NHIF shown to act as reliable source for financing medicine to its members.