ABSTRACT
Patient compliance rates may differ between nations – patients in developingcountries often being less compliant than those in developed countries – butcompliance is crossing socioeconomic borders to challenge both developed and developing countries (WHO, 2001). Two years after the World Health Organization (WHO) published its Policy for Action, the international organization published Adherence to Long-term Therapies: Evidence for Action (WHO, 2003) and recommended a multidisciplinary approach in improving patient compliance. C. Everett Koop, the former US Surgeon General said, ‘Drugs don’t work if people don’t take them’, and in 2003 the Wall Street Journal labelled patient compliance as the ‘Real Drug Problem’ in the United States, claiming that ‘rich, highly educated people are just as likely not to take their medicine as poor or less-educated people’ (cited in Marcus, 2003).
