Essential Medicines
The Medicines, Diagnostics, Infrastructure and other Technologies team provides technical support to Member States to improve availability of, and access to, life-saving essential medicines, vaccines, diagnostics and other health technologies. WHO operates within a context of weakness in health system governance, inadequate health care infrastructure and weak supply chains.
Medicines are a driver of out-of-pocket payments, yet access to medicines remains a critical challenge in Africa, leading to preventable suffering and poor health outcomes. This has exacerbated wider health and socioeconomic disparities and hindered progress towards achieving universal health coverage (UHC).
Inconsistent integration of traditional medicines, blood products, medical devices, oxygen and other health products into national health policies results in siloed approaches, aggravated by limited local and regional production of medicines and health products.
WHO support to Member States in this area is organized around three strategic priorities: supply system strengthening, regulatory system strengthening, and health products policy and governance.
Priority actions going forward include:
- African Medicines Agency: advocating for continental improvement of health products regulation via the African Medicines Agency.
- Local production and regulation: implementing the framework for strengthening local production of medical products in the African Region for the period 2025–2035, and the regional strategy on regulation of medical products, 2016–2025 (resolution AFR/RC66/R2).
- Pooled procurement: harmonizing legal provisions among Member States in Regional Economic Communities (RECs) to facilitate uptake of pooled procurement of quality health products.
- Public–private collaboration: promoting improved collaboration between public and private stakeholders for access to health products at the primary health care level.
