The World Health Organization defines essential medicines as those that meet the priority needs of healthcare poblacional.138 In 1975, the World Health Assembly called on WHO to help Member States to identify and procure essential medicines that would ensure safety, good quality and appropriate to its cost effectiveness.
The first list of WHO essential drugs (now known as EML English, for short, and Castilian as LME), published in 1977, was described as "a peaceful revolution in international public health" .139 The list established the principle that some medicines were more useful than others, and that many essential medicines are often unaffordable for people who need them. Today, most countries maintain national lists of essential drugs. The lists are important because they guide the efforts of the public sector in its pursuit of supply of medicines, and programs that reimburse the cost of medicines donations of medicines and local production of drugs.
the last 29 years, the Non Gub., The nonprofit aid agencies and intergovernmental agencies have widely adopted policies for essential medicines. But from the beginning, the pharmaceutical industry opposed the concept of the LME and considered it an interference against market forces, a threat to private sector operations.
In theory, "is intended to make essential medicines available in the context of existing health systems at all times in adequate amounts, in appropriate dosages and forms, with guaranteed quality at a price the individual and the community can afford ".140 But of course the reality is very different. There is a serious disparity in access to essential medicines even when this "access" is defined in more modest terms: WHO defined access as the percentage of the population that can obtain at least 20 essential drugs, which must be continuously available (and be affordable) in health facilities or drug store, less than an hour's walk from the home of paciente.141 \u200b\u200b
In 1988, WHO published a report on the worldwide drug situation ( The World Drug Situation) where it was estimated that between 1 300 and 2 500 million people had little or no continuous access to the most essential drugs. When 16 years after WHO issued after such report (The World Medicines Situation), the number had hardly changed, but represented a smaller percentage of the population: 30 percent, whereas before it was 37 per ciento.142 Four of the six WHO regions (totaling 183 countries), most countries have little or medium access to essential medicines (
95 percent). For example, of the 35 countries of the Americas, 21 are of little to medium access, while 14 have medium to high.
The following table compares Africa's access to essential medicines as directed by the first WHO global report 1988, and up dated in 2004. According to WHO, 47 percent of Africa's population lacks essential drugs. From 45 countries, 16 show no improvement or deterioration (between the mid-eighties and late nineties), of whom all but one, have a very low access to essential medicines.
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