E-drug: WHO and training
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[This is a further response from WHO following the posting from
George Kibumba few weeks ago
' ....... although the World Health Organization (WHO)
produces some publications relevant for health professionals in
developing settings, her productions scarcely cater for the academic
needs of students pursuing professions in health.' BS]
Dear E-druggers,
WHO is an international agency that is accountable to it's member states and
with a limited budget. Therefore, WHO has to prioritise what it does and the
member states have to agree to what it does. As a consequence, it may seem
that WHO works with ministries of health to the exclusion of other agencies
such as non-governmental organisations or universities. Nevertheless WHO
does undertake much work with universities and non-governmental
organisations as well as with ministries of health. Although WHO does not
generally write textbooks for students much of the work is of direct benefit
to students and others who wish to improve the health of populations.
Examples are as follows and relate mainly to the field of drugs (although of
course there are many other examples):
(1) Many documents are available on WHO's website,
http://www.who.int/medicines , and perhaps many university teachers are not
aware of how much is there.
(2) Although many textbooks already exist, in many countries there is a
problem of access to them. WHO is working towards this through the Health
internetwork Access to Research initiative where 2,200 journals are provided
either free or at reduced rates on-line to 112 poor countries. Details of
this may be found through the WHO website: http://www.who.int
(3) WHO does organise a number of training courses on various aspects of
rational use of medicines, details of which are posted on the WHO website:
http://www.who.int/medicines
(4) WHO has produced the Guide to Good Prescribing aimed specifically at
medical undergraduates and does organise international courses on
problem-based pharmacotherapy every year in collaboration with various
partners - see the website for details.
(5) The different departments of WHO produce clinical guidelines for the
diseases that they work on. The department of Essential Drugs and Medicines
Policy is working towards the development of a web-based medicines library
where the WHO model essential drug list, the model formulary and summaries
of all the clinical guidelines produced by WHO will be available on the WHO
medicines website (as detailed above) together with the supporting evidence
and links to the full clinical guidelines. It is hoped that this will be a
tremendous resource for member states and all health professionals when it
is finished.
Finally, we in WHO are well aware that we could be doing more and are always
open to suggestions about how we might do better given the various
constraints under which we work.
Dr. Kathleen Holloway
Medical Officer for Policy, Access and Rational Use,
Department of Essential Drugs and Medicines Policy,
World Health Organisation, 20 Avenue Appia, Gen�ve, CH-1211
Tel: +41 22 791 2336; Fax: +41 22 791 4167
email: hollowayk@who.int
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