Dear Meliza,
I can't speak for the rest of the world (I note you refer to Asia) but here in the UK we pay a National Insurance to our Goverment which acts much like a form of insurance policy, covering us for seveal things including FREE health care.
Like many other countries and ecconomic situations, austerity and cut-backs have been necessciary to ensure that things are kept withing a tight financial control, including our National Health Service (NHS) which has cut-bact many of the former things that it once readily provided.
Blood glucose testing strips were a target for these cut-backs, and type 2 diabetic's on diet and most other diabetic medications were the first choice for cuts, Type 1's being exempted at least for now. The fact that many medications given to a Type 2 can also bring on a Hypoglycaemic result (Hypo) seems to be generally overlooked, and it is often a random decision as to whether the test strips will be issued to the patient often depending on where they live within the UK and the Local Health Trust policy.
Yes we can indeed buy them, but many of us are on a limited income, and the test strips, though costing pennies to produce are sold on by the meter manufacturer at a 'considerable mark up;'
The test strips are in general not interchangable between the numerous B/G meters, and in my particular case a box of 25 strips costs approximately £25.00 leaving little alternative other than to throw my fully working B/G meter in the dustbin and purchase an alternative model where the test strips are a more realistic and sencible price.
Our NHS tells us diabetics to take care of ourselves and do things to control our diabetes, but they are failing to make it easy for us to comply with their advice and recomendations over B/G monitoring.
Most Type 2's are advised these days 'Not To Test' claiming that it is 'no longer necessciary' and that the HbA1c test that we diabetics periodically get 'Once' or sometimes 'Twice' a year (if we're lucky) should be all that is needed or so we are frequently told..
Perhaps the powers that be within the NHS should look further as since these cut-backs were introduced, the number of weekly amputations, kidney failures, circulation problems, heart and eye problems and numerous other diabetic secondary complications are increasing as time passes.
Issuing FREE test strips in the UK won't solve all these problems, but it's most definately cost effective in the long term to do so.
