ArticleMDM policy & practice
Designing the Free Drugs List in Nepal: A Balancing Act Between Technical Strengths and Policy Processes.
Article in MDM policy & practice. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Health System Capacity and Access Barriers to Diagnosis and Treatment of CVD and Diabetes in Nepal.Global heart · 2021Pooled it
- Knowledge on tuberculosis and utilization of DOTS service by tuberculosis patients in Lalitpur District, Nepal.PloS one · 2021Trial
- Global norms, local institutions: a controlled comparative case study of WHO essential medicines policy adoption in Eastern Europe.Globalization and health · 2026Article
- Assessing the national essential medicines list selection processes: Instrument development and testing.PloS one · 2026Article
- How Least Developed to Lower-Middle Income Countries Use Health Technology Assessment: A Scoping Review.Pathogens and global health · 2023Article
- Strengthen health systems to achieve the SDG targets for healthy children: Evidence on access to medicines situation in Nepal.The Lancet regional health. Southeast Asia · 2022Article
- Assessing the potential of HTA to inform resource allocation decisions in low-income settings: The case of Malawi.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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Abstract
As more countries provide free health care, pharmaceutical reimbursement lists are becoming a concern, especially in low- and middle-income countries. In 2007, Nepal decreed that health is a human right and began basic health coverage for a target group of the poor, destitute, elderly, and disabled. The Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) also provided 40 drugs without cost to all citizens through the Free Drugs List (FDL) program. The FDL was later expanded from 40 to 70 drugs; however, the process of review and update remains unclear. To propose a mechanism for future development of the FDL, we conducted a document review and in-depth consultations with representatives from the MoHP and the World Health Organization Country Office during a workshop in Kathmandu. The FDL suffers from lack of an appropriate process, gaps between the listed drugs and Nepal's burden of disease, and no consideration of the unit costs or cost-effectiveness of drugs included in the list. We propose a new drug selection process that is a variant of the health technology assessment process. This process can be applied not only in Nepal but also in other resource-limited countries that wish to ensure their citizens' access to essential medicines through a pharmaceutical reimbursement list.
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