The Lancet Commission on Essential Medicines Policies

In mid 2014 The Lancet commissioned a group of 21 independent experts in a variety of disciplines to generate a report on Essential Medicines Policies to be published in late 2016, about 30 years after the Nairobi Conference on the Rational Use of Drugs. Dr Lembit Rägo, the Secretary-General of tCouncil for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) was one of the Commissioners.

The goals of The Lancet Commission on Essential Medicines Policies were:

1) Reconfirming the ongoing relevance, and the crucial need of comprehensive essential medicines policies to achieve broader global health and sustainable development goals, especially universal health coverage, and

2) Formulating recommendations for global essential medicine policies for the next two decades.

The tasks of the Commission included:
• Synthesize lessons learned from the first 30 years of essential medicines policies’ development and implementation
• Develop an agenda for the next 20 years of institutional, regional, national and global policies on essential medicines and other health technologies
• Raise global awareness of the relevance of essential medicine policies in achieving global health and sustainable development goals, with special attention paid to universal health coverage
• Define the current needs of operational research that contribute to increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of essential medicines policies and programmes

We would like to share with you the report that was published by The Lancet on 8 November 2016. The report is available from the Commission web site

Essential medicines for universal health coverage.

Wirtz, Veronika J et al.
The Lancet , Volume 389 , Issue 10067 , 403 - 476

Best regards,
Dr Lembit Rägo, Secretary-General, CIOMS
The Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) is an international, non-governmental, non-profit organization established jointly by WHO and UNESCO in 1949. 
Website: www.cioms.ch