Retail medicine prices are regulated in South Africa through the Single Exit Price Mechanism. These prices are published on a regular basis at www.mpr.gov.za. The information is only available in a large and unwieldy excel spreadsheet making it inaccessible to casual users.

This projects builds an API and basic user interface to query this database. You can find a running instance at mpr.netlify.com.

A typical use-case would be for a consumer to look for alternative products for a particular medicine, often generic medicines can be much cheaper than the branded product. Another use-case allows consumers to ensure that they are not being overcharged for their medicines. This database publishes the maximum price at which a medicine can be sold. A pharmacy cannot legally increase the price of a particular medicine above the price listed here.

In addition to providing this simple web interface, we make available a rudimentary API that you can use to access the most up-to-date prices to be used in third party applications.

A more comprehensive search that makes available additional fields https://mpr.code4sa.org/api/v2/search?q=lamictin

Accessing product details https://mpr.code4sa.org/api/v2/detail?nappi=703312001

Finding generic products (based in active ingredients) https://mpr.code4sa.org/api/v2/related?nappi=703312001

Basic search e.g. https://mpr.code4sa.org/api/v2/search-lite?q=lamictin

Downloading a dump of the entire database https://mpr.code4sa.org/api/v2/dump

Get the last updated date https://mpr.code4sa.org/api/v2/last-updated

1. Clone the repository by running git clone [email protected]:codebridge-za/medicine-price-registry.git.
2. Make sure you have the latest release of NodeJS installed.
3. Run npm install in the root folder of the repository to install all dependancies.

1. Please review the branches and commits sections in the following documentation.
2. Create a new branch before adding a new feature (skip this step if you are contributing on a specific branch)
3. This project is using Gatsby.js. You can run npm start in the root folder
4. This will open a local version of the project at localhost:8000

1. If you are making a public pull request (i.e. you do not have write access) use the forking Git workflow.
2. If you are a project contributor (.e. you have write access) use the feature branch Git workflow.
3. Make a pull request via the Github dashboard to the develop branch.
4. The designated owner of the repository will automatically be tagged in all pull requests via the docs/CODEOWNERS file.
5. Once your code has been accepted and merged into master Netlify will automatically deploy the changes to mpr.netlify.com/.

• This project is currently making use of CSS Modules for styling purposes temporarily.
• When adding to the project, please follow the folder and file structure already in place.
• This project is following the eslint-config-airbnb styleguide.

• Change style convention to make use of Styled Components as well as Material UI components.
• Add CSS spinner before each ajax call.
• Redesign and submit new feature ideas.
• Create a script that downloads the latest database instead of shipping a sqlite db with the repo.
• It might be useful to compare prices over time.
• Seems like there are some spelling errors in the database - e.g. paracetamol and paracetemol. Might need to clean the database through some sort of fuzzy match and possibly report those errors back to mpr