ArticleBMJ open2022
Global status of essential medicine selection: a systematic comparison of national essential medicine lists with recommendations by WHO.
Article in BMJ open, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Access to Essential Medicines in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review of Barriers and Facilitators.International journal of public health · 2026Pooled it
- Fortifying essential medicines supply chains in Sub-Saharan Africa - the curious cases of Kenya and Uganda.Global health action · 2026Review
- Comparison of essential drug lists: concordance, differences, and the need for core lists in times of crisis.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Article
- Clustering of countries based on national essential medicines lists: cross-sectional study.BMJ global health · 2026Article
- Global norms, local institutions: a controlled comparative case study of WHO essential medicines policy adoption in Eastern Europe.Globalization and health · 2026Article
- Article
- Rarely listed essential medicines in 158 national lists.Journal of pharmaceutical policy and practice · 2026Article
- Therapeutic apartheid: a cross-sectional assessment of estimated cost, accessibility, affordability, and availability among psychotropic medications across 25 regions.Therapeutic advances in psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Article
- The Political Economy of the World Health Organization Model Lists of Essential Medicines.The Milbank quarterly · 2025Article
- Medicines not recommended for inclusion in the who essential medicines list: a retrospective observational study.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Article
- Regulation of mark-up on medicine prices in Zimbabwe: a pilot survey from 92 community pharmacies in the metropolitan area of Harare.Health economics review · 2024Article
- Article
- Measuring the value of theBulletin of the World Health Organization · 2024Article
- A quantitative comparison between the essential medicines for rheumatic diseases in children and young people in Africa and the WHO model list.Pediatric rheumatology online journal · 2024Article
- GRADE Concept 7: Issues and Insights Linking Guideline Recommendations to Trustworthy Essential Medicine Lists.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2024Article
- [Concordance between essential medicines lists and diabetes guidelines in Latin America and the CaribbeanConcordância entre as listas de medicamentos essenciais e diretrizes para diabetes na América Latina e no Caribe].Revista panamericana de salud publica = Pan American journal of public health · 2024Article
- Uptake of orphan drugs in the WHO essential medicines lists.Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2024Article
- User-experience testing of an evidence-to-decision framework for selecting essential medicines.PLOS global public health · 2024Article
- Digital Health in the African Region Should be Integral to the Health System's Strengthening.Mayo Clinic proceedings. Digital health · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesExamining the availability of essential medicines is a necessary step to monitor country-level progress towards universal health coverage. We compared the 2017 essential medicine lists (EML) of 137 countries to the WHO Model List to assess differences by drug class and country setting.
methodsWe extracted all medicines prioritised at country level from most recently available national EMLs and compared each national EML with the 2017 WHO Model List of Essential Medicines (MLEM) as the reference standard. We assess EMLs by WHO region and for different types of medicine subgroups (eg, cancer, anti-infectives, cardiac, psychiatric and anaesthesia medicines) using within second-level anatomical therapeutic class (ATC) drug classes of the ATC Index.
resultsWe included 406 medicines from WHO's 2017 MLEM to compare to 137 concurrent national EMLs. We found a median of 315 (range from 44 to 983) medicines listed on national EMLs. The global median F1 score was 0.59 (IQR 0.47-0.70, maximum possible score indicating alignment with MLEM is 1). The F1 score was the highest (ie, most similar to MLEM) in the South-East Asia region and the lowest in the European region (ie, most dissimilar to MLEM). The F1 score was highest for stomatological preparations (median: 1.00), gynaecological-anti-infectives and antiseptics (median: 1.00), and medicated dressings (median: 1.00), and lowest for 9 anatomical or pharmacological groups (median: 0.00, eg, treatments for bone diseases, digestive enzymes).
conclusionsMost countries are expected to improve their national health coverage by 2030 offering access to essential medicines, but our results revealed substantial gaps in selection of medicines at the national level compared with those recommended by WHO. It is crucial that governments consider investing in those effective medicines that are now neglected and continue monitoring progress towards essential medicine access as part of universal health coverage.
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