Tough decisions on essential medicines in 2015

In 1977, the World Health Organization (WHO) published its first Model List of Essential Medicines. This year, the Expert Committee for the Selection and Use of Medicines will consider requests to include high-cost medicines for cancer, hepatitis C, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and new oral anti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2015-04, Vol.93 (4), p.283-284
Main Authors: Magrini, Nicola, Robertson, Jane, Forte, Gilles, Cappello, Bernadette, Moja, Lorenzo P, de Joncheere, Kees, Kieny, Marie-Paule
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Cancer
Chronic Disease - drug therapy
Classification
Clinical trials
Committees
Cost analysis
Decision making
Developing countries
Diseases
Drugs
Drugs, Essential - economics
Drugs, Essential - supply & distribution
Drugs, Essential - therapeutic use
Health
Health care
Humans
LDCs
Lists
Medicine
Messages
Multidrug resistant organisms
Mycobacterium
Oncology
Organizations
Pharmaceutical industry
Public Health
Regulatory approval
Tuberculosis
Wage & price controls
World Health Organization
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Summary:In 1977, the World Health Organization (WHO) published its first Model List of Essential Medicines. This year, the Expert Committee for the Selection and Use of Medicines will consider requests to include high-cost medicines for cancer, hepatitis C, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and new oral anticoagulants on the model list. Previous expert committees have recognized the message that comes with identifying a medicine as essential. In 2013, the expert committee defined public health relevance to encompass overall incidence and prevalence of diseases as well as diseases that are specific to certain regions and diseases that are uncommon but for which there are effective medicines. Two novel agents against tuberculosis, bedaquiline and delamanid, achieved regulatory approval based on promising, though limited, data from clinical trials. The model list uses a classification of core and complementary medicines. This does not imply that only core medicines should be procured by the public system, while complementary medicines are optional.
ISSN:0042-9686
1564-0604
DOI:10.2471/BLT.15.154385