Essential medicines

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According to the definition of the World Health Organization (WHO), indispensable drugs (WHO designation Essential Medicines , German also indispensable drugs , indispensable drugs ) are those drugs that are required to meet the most urgent needs of the population for medical care. In a healthcare system, they should be available in adequate quantities, in the correct dosage form, of good quality and at a price that is affordable for the patient.

The World Health Organization summarizes the indispensable drugs in the model list of essential drugs , which is intended as a recommendation for governments of individual countries to develop their own standards of care. By the end of 2003, 156 states had official lists of essential medicines. Nevertheless, a considerable part of the world population has no access to these active substances.

Ensuring that all people have access to essential medicines is a declared aim of the Millennium Summit .

List of essential medicines

A sample list of indispensable drugs is compiled by an expert committee of the WHO ( Expert Committee on the Selection and Use of Essential Medicines ) according to the criteria of disease frequency , effectiveness and safety as well as cost-effectiveness. The list is aimed primarily at national governments; they should create their own lists based on the WHO list for their regional needs. The list, first published by WHO in 1977, is revised every two years. At present, drugs with around 300 different drugs , including many vaccines , are listed.

Access to essential medicines

According to a World Bank publication , one third of the world's population does not have effective access to essential medicines. About 65 percent of all Indians and 47 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa cannot get essential medicines when they need them. The reasons for this are complex: lack of financial opportunities, poor infrastructure and logistics, a generally poorly developed health system, in some cases drug prices that are too high due to patent protection (see below).

In developing and emerging countries, drug costs make up a significant part of health expenditure. Serious illness spending is a major contributor to household poverty in these countries.

Essential medicines and patents

Around 95 percent of the drugs on the current WHO list are not patent-protected . These drugs can thus be manufactured and traded as generics worldwide at low cost . The antivirals listed by the WHO for the treatment of AIDS are problematic because they are patented . As a rule, these are not only protected by patents in developed countries; The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) has extended this protection in recent years to emerging and developing countries, which has made access to these funds even more difficult in such countries. The organization Doctors Without Borders is therefore calling for the TRIPS agreement to be changed in such a way that all essential medicines in these countries are excluded from patent protection.

Such demands are also coming from the universities. In 2001 the Universities Allied for Essential Medicines association was founded at Yale University , which advocates that neglected diseases (see below) should also be given greater consideration in university research and that poor countries can also benefit from research results.

Neglected diseases

Another problem related to essential medicines is neglected diseases . The World Health Organization understands this to mean diseases that occur predominantly or exclusively in developing countries, for example tropical diseases such as malaria or African trypanosomiasis . For many of these diseases, in some cases, no new drugs have been developed for decades because pharmaceutical research in this area cannot be carried out at a cost-effective level for pharmaceutical companies . Recently, however, a number of newer developments in the form of a public-private partnership have been started and in some cases have already been successful, for example a new, non-patent-protected artesunate - amodiaquine combination preparation (ASAQ) for the treatment of malaria. At the beginning of December 2014, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) and Bayer HealthCare signed a cooperation agreement for the development of a drug that is intended to completely cure river disease ( onchocerciasis ).

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  1. ↑ a b Essential medicines , www.who.int (last accessed in February 2010)
  2. ^ WHO Model List of Essential Medicines. 17th list, March 2011. ( PDF, 432 kB )
  3. ^ Priorities in Health. World Bank 2006.
  4. ↑ drugs campaign by Doctors Without Borders
  5. ↑ Universities Allied for Essential Medicines - about us ( Memento of the original dated February 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / essentialmedicine.org
  6. ↑ Neglected diseases at the WHO
  7. ↑ ASAQ on DNDi.org ( Memento of the original from May 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dndi.org
  8. ↑ Press release on the DNDi website, accessed on December 16, 2014

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