E-drug: Selected articles in latest edition of essential Drugs Monitor
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The latest edition of the Essential Drugs Monitor has three articles about
the 25th Anniversary of the Selection of Essential Medicines.
The three articles can be downloaded using Satelife's GetWeb function. To do
this send a message to getweb@healthnet.org
have a blank subject line and type in or copy and paste the following
message:
begin
get http://www.who.int/medicines/mon/32_6.pdf
get http://www.who.int/medicines/mon/32_7.pdf
get http://www.who.int/medicines/mon/32_8.pdf
end
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two sets of files.
I have a few queries about some of the issues raised in these articles. In
the first article, the speech by the then Director General Dr Brundtland,
she said "Essential Drugs are not an ordinary commodity. Access to health
care is a human right. Governments and international agencies have an
obligation to see this right progressively realised. Access to essential
drugs is part of this obligation." She also said "The concept of essential
medicines has global relevance and is a global necessity."
My queries are "How widely accepted are these two points? Does this mean
that every country should have a national essential drug list of medicines
which should be "progressively" available to it's citizens? What effect will
this have on the process of choosing essential medicines to be on the
national essential medicines lists?"
In the articles by Margaretha Helling-Borda and by me there is a comparison
of the old way of selecting medicines using an experience based method with
the new evidence based method. In my article I said "There are many
challenges for both WHO and countries in translating the ideal of an
essential medicines list produced from evidence based guidelines into
reality. Who will do the work? Where is the evidence? Will countries have
the capacity to revise the WHO Model List to meet their specific country
needs?"
I would be interested in hearing of national experiences in producing
evidence based national lists. What could be done to help this process?
I hope that E-druggers will use the GetWeb function to download web articles
using e-mail and will discuss the Monitor articles.
Richard Laing
Richard Laing (Medical Officer)
Policy, Access and Rational Use,
Essential Drugs and Medicines Policy,
World Health Organization
CH-1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland
Tel 41 22 791 4533
Fax 41 22791 4167
E-mail laingr@who.int
Access Essential Drugs Monitor #32 at http://www.who.int/medicines/mon/mon32.shtml
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