The World Health Organization (WHO) today published the new edition of its Model List of Essential Medicines) which includes ground-breaking new treatments for hepatitis C, a variety of cancers (including breast cancer and leukaemia) and multi-drug resistant  tuberculosis (TB), among others.  The move opens the way to improve  access to innovative medicines that show clear clinical benefits and could have enormous public health impact globally.

“When new effective medicines emerge to safely treat serious and widespread diseases,  it is vital to  ensure that everyone who needs them can obtain them,” said WHO Director General, Dr Margaret Chan.  “Placing them on the WHO Essential Medicines List is a first step in that direction.”

Increasingly, governments and institutions around the world are using the WHO list  to guide the development of their own essential medicines lists, because they know that every medicine listed has been vetted for efficacy, safety and quality, and that there has been a comparative cost-effectiveness evaluation with other alternatives in the same class of medicines.

The list is updated every two years by an Expert Committee, made up of recognized specialists from academia, research and the medical and pharmaceutical professions. This year, the Committee underscored the urgent need to take action to promote equitable access and use of several new highly effective medicines, some of which are currently too costly even for high-income countries.

These included new medicines to treat Hepatitis C, which affects about 150 million people globally, killing approximately half a million people each year, when chronic infection develops into liver cirrhosis or liver cancer.  The disease is present in high- and lower-income countries alike, with higher concentrations in several middle- and low-income countries.

For more details, go to: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/new-essential-medicines-list/en/