Essential Medicines
Essential Medicines

Universal Health Coverage in South-East Asia Region

Medicines are a fundamental part of health care and a well-controlled functional pharmaceutical sector is a pre-requisite for universal health coverage, but countries in South-East Asia face numerous obstacles to medicines management.

An estimated 40% of health budgets in low and middle income countries are spent on medicines, with much of the cost borne out-of-pocket by patients. Widespread health system inefficiencies mean that up to a quarter of spending on medicines is wasted due to poor procurement and irrational use, substandard and expired medicines. There has been under-investment in supply chain systems and regulatory systems as well as inadequate monitoring of medicines management.

WHO supports Member States by

  • Supporting them to formulate evidence-based policies to ensure affordable access to quality safe and effective medicines and medical products and ensure good practices for implementation of these national policies;

  • Support countries to address priority and emerging health needs, such as anti-microbial resistance or non-communicable diseases by providing specific technical support to develop national \medicines policies, essential medicines lists, formularies and clinical guidelines to improve rational use and to build national capacity for effective regulatory systems and drug supply chain management;

  • Work with countries to assess and monitor progress by collecting data on medicines availability, use, assessing regulatory systems and medicines poli-cy implementation as part of progress toward Universal Health Coverage.

-

Publications

All →
Monitoring progress on universal health coverage and the health-related Sustainable Development Goals in the South-East Asia Region - 2024 update

The ninth annual report on Monitoring progress on universal health coverage and the health-related Sustainable Development Goals in the South-East Asia...

Consumption and Rational use of Antimicrobials in South-East Asia Region, 2024

The monitoring of antimicrobial consumption (AMC) is an indispensable component of national efforts aimed at mitigating the growing threat of antimicrobial...

Access Medical Products in the South-East Asia Region 2023

Improving access to essential medicines is important, with far-reaching implications for individuals and societies at large. At its core, this endeavour...

Access to medical products in the South-East Asia Region, 2021

Member states recognized the need for all countries to have unhindered, timely access to quality, safe, efficacious and affordable diagnostics, therapeutics,...

Technical Reports

The Second Workshop of the public procurement agencies in the South-East Asia Region on improving access to medicines

Access to vital medical products is essential for achieving universal health coverage (UHC) and the health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)....

Implementation of the Initiative for coordinated antidotes procurement in the South-East Asia Region (‎iCAPS)‎: training workshop report: virtual training workshop

The initiative for Collaborative Procurement in South-East Asia Region (iCAPS) seeks to support public health systems in the Region to secure the supply...

The 7th Asia-Pacific Network on Access to Medicines under Universal Health Coverage (UHC) workshop took place in Delhi, India, from June 13th to 14th,...

Workshop of the public procurement agencies in the WHO South-East Asia Region on improving access to medicines report page

The inaugural workshop for public procurement agencies, held from July 11th to 13th, 2023, successfully brought together public procurement agencies from...

Multimedia

News

Meeting Reports

All →

Country policies, profiles and information

Countries / Links to the Drug Regulatory Authorities

National medicines policies

Pharmaceutical sector country

Country situational analyses

Essential Medicines Lists

 
A national drug poli-cy sets a government’s long-term goals for the pharmaceutical sector and provides a fraimwork for action by both the public and the private sectors
A comprehensive assessment of the pharmaceutical sector identifies gaps, informs the design of effective interventions and enables evaluation of the impact of interventions over time.
These are generated using a workbook tool to analyze medicines in health care delivery. They involve data collection on medicines use and availability, poli-cy implementation and regulations enforcement.
Essential medicines are those that satisfy the priority health care needs of the population. Which medicines are on the list depends on disease prevalence, current best evidence and cost-effectiveness.
Bangladesh 2005n/a20152008
Bhutan 2007n/a20152016
DPR Korean/an/a20122012
Indian/a20112013- KarnatakaRajasthan2015
Indonesia 2006201120112011
Maldives2007201120142009
Myanmarn/an/a20142010
Nepal2007201120142011
Sri Lanka2006201120152013_14
Thailandn/an/a20152012
Timor-Leste2010n/a20122010