E-DRUG: Lancet Review article on essential medicines for NCDs
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[Important review article about essential medicines for the biggest epidemic now threatening developing countries. The Lancet has more papers on Non-Communicable Diseases in the same series. WB]
Dear E-druggers,
This week the Lancet has published a fourth series of articles on NCDs. This series includes, for the first time, a long review article on how to improve access to essential medicines for NCDs, written by a group of experts with medical, pharmacy and legal backgrounds.
The article uses the experiences of 30 years of essential medicines policies and 10 years of scaling up HIV medicines to formulate a series of practical recommendations for NCDs.
The main messages of the paper are that more medicines can be procured within existing budgets with generic medicines policies, efficient selection and procurement, as well as appropriate use.
At the same time countries need to increase mobilization of domestic resources through tax-based or social health insurance-based systems or mixes of those, and strengthen patient-centred care to promote adherence with appointment systems, evening opening hours, task-shifting and down-referral of chronic treatment to rural facilities close to home.
Coherent and equitable health and trade policies, particularly those for intellectual property, are key to ensure access to new and future on-patent medicinal products.
One overarching and crucial challenge to promotion of access to NCD medicines is how to address the frequent conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry. Governments will need to ensure transparent and accountable processes in which stakeholders are equitably represented and all potential and actual conflicts of interest are explicitly identified and systematically addressed. Setting targets and defining indicators for access to NCD medicines will be essential to monitor progress.
Promotion of access to essential medicines for non-communicable diseases: practical implications of the UN Political Declaration. 4th Lancet Series. Non-communicable Diseases
Hans V Hogerzeil, Jonathan Liberman, Veronika J Wirtz, Sandeep P Kishore, Sakthi Selvaraj, Rachel Kiddell-Monroe, Faith N Mwangi-Powell, Tido von Schoen-Angerer.
Lancet 2013 Feb 12 e-Lancet, Early Online Publication, 12 February 2013, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)62128-X
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)62128-X/fulltext
(Access to the full text version is free of charge after registration)
For more information please contact:
Hans Hogerzeil (h.v.hogerzeil@umcg.nl)
Veronika Wirtz (vwirtz@bu.edu)