BACKGROUND In 1977 the World Health Organization created its first Model List of Essential Medicines-a list designed to aid countries in determining which medicines to prioritize on their National Essential Medicines Lists. In classifying drugs as "essential," the World Health Organization has historically stressed drugs' ability to meet priority health needs of populations and cost. OBJECTIV...

Since 1977, the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines (EML), published by WHO, has provided advice for Member States that struggle to decide which pharmaceutical technologies should be provided to patients within their public health systems. Originating from outside WHO, an incentive system has been put in place by various governments for the development of medicines for rare diseases ("orphan ...

The Pharmaceutical Assistance Cycle (PA) is the basis for healthcare services through which pharmaceutical assistance and expertise can be implemented in a functional and structured way to meet public health demands, adhere to the Brazilian Ministry of Health vision, and strike a balance in the contemporary struggle for health equity. The aim of this research is to analyze the effectiveness of ...

OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of the National Essential Medicines Scheme (NEMS) with respect to urban-rural inequalities regarding drug prescriptions in primary care facilities. METHODS A stratified two-stage random sampling strategy was used to sample 23,040 prescriptions from 192 primary care facilities from 2009 to 2010. Difference-in-Difference (DID) analyses were performed to test the a...

On Oct 21, WHO published the full report of the 20th Expert Committee on the Selection and Use of Essential Medicines, with its new WHO Model List of Essential Medicines (EML). The new list includes recently developed medicines for drug-resistant tuberculosis (bedaquiline and delamanid), a number of new cancer treatments (such as imatinib, rituximab, and trastuzumab), and, perhaps most controve...