South Africa's pharmaceutical market is the single largest on the African continent. Its pharmaceutical spending per capita is high for an African country - at USD57 in 2017. We forecast South Africa's total pharmaceutical expenditure to increase from ZAR43.3bn (USD3.2bn) in 2017 to ZAR45.4bn (USD3.4bn) in 2018, equating to growth of 4.8% and 5.6% in local currency and US dollar terms respectively. Total pharmaceutical expenditure was equivalent to 0.9% of GDP and 11.1% of total healthcare expenditure in 2017. South Africa's pharmaceutical market is dominated by prescription drug spending, including patented and generic drug expenditure, which accounts for approximately 88.3% of the total market. Over-the-counter (OTC) medicine spending represents the remainder of 11.5%. Of the three sub-divisions, patented medicines represent the largest single segment of the total market by value, at approximately 52.8% in 2017, followed by generic drug spending with 35.5% of total medicines spending.

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South Africa Demographic Outlook

Pharmaceuticals & Healthcare Glossary

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