Introduction:

The World Health Organization recommended to Member States the implementation of various measures with the intention of ensuring the effective and equitable access to medicines, as well as its rational use in harmony with the environment. However, in Latin America access to health services and medicines has a mercantilist tendency, where marketing is done with nuances of profit which transgresses the rights of people who aspire to an improvement in that regard.

Objective:

To describe the access to medicines in Latin America and, specifically, in Costa Rica.

Methods:

This is a work of documentary research, with a qualitative approach, which was based on the search and selection of materials in databases of scientific publications, with the use of keywords. The search was organized in two sections: access to medicines in Latin America and access to medicines in Costa Rica.

Conclusions:

The efforts made are not enough to achieve the equitable access to medicines. There are still diverse causes that generate avoidable inequalities in order to reach the limited resources and higher cost´s drugs. Costa Rica reflects the same difficulties that the rest of the countries of the area. So, it must be taken into account the unequal and inadequate behaviours of some sectors of the population and create adequate educational strategies for their rational use; and to establish policies and appropriate controls against high prices of medicines.

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