Nadeem I. Bukhari

1 Introduction Pharmaceuticals are public goods essential for preventing and treating diseases, necessitating a national system for appropriate supply according to demand (Phuong et al., 2019). When supply falls short of demand, resulting in a drug shortage, patients may experience exacerbated conditions and be exposed to side effects due to inappropriate substitute medications (Tucker et al., 2020).

1 Introduction Chronic illnesses are usually prolonged illnesses that are managed throughout the course of a patient’s life and are not often completely cured (Dowrick et al., 2005). They may require either life-long or long-term medication therapy and the success of long-term treatments depends on proper adherence to the medication therapy regimen (World Health Organization, 2003; Dowrick et al., 2005; Naqvi et al., 2019).