WHO essential medicines policies and use in developing and transitional countries: an analysis of reported policy implementation and medicines use surveys.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Suboptimal medicine use is a global public health problem. For 35 years the World Health Organization (WHO) has promoted essential medicines policies to improve quality use of medicines (QUM), but evidence of their effectiveness is lacking, and uptake by countries remains low. Our objective was to determine whether WHO essential medicines policies are associated with better QUM.

Methods and findings

We compared results from independently conducted medicines use surveys in countries that did versus did not report implementation of WHO essential medicines policies. We extracted survey data on ten validated QUM indicators and 36 self-reported policy implementation variables from WHO databases for 2002-2008. We calculated the average difference (as percent) for the QU

SUBMITTER: Holloway KA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4165598 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature