the effectiveness of any drug supply systems in providing a trustworthy supply of essential drugs is a critical issue. to evaluate this effectiveness, it is necessary to watch over the status of the essential medicines in any country impartially and continuously. some countries and also the world health organization (who) have codified a list of minimum medicines needed for a basic health care ...

1106 Vol 350 • October 11, 1997 3 WHO. Management Sciences for Health in Collaboration with World Health Organization Action Programme on Essential Drugs. In: Management drug supply. Hartford: Kumavian Press, 1997. 4 Market News Service. Pharmaceutical Raw Materials/Essential Drugs, International Trade Centre, UNCTAD/GATT in collaboration with the World Health Organization. August, 1997. Indeed...

Progress in cancer treatment has brought with it challenges that go beyond cure. Toxicities and morbidity are among the biggest hurdles for a cancer patient to face while hoping for the end of chemotherapy or radiation therapy. Important advances have been made in the science of supportive care to address cancer treatment toxicities and complications. Nausea and vomiting, bone complications, ho...

CONTEXT Recent public outcry has highlighted the rising cost of prescription drugs worldwide, which in several disease areas outpaces other health care expenditures and results in a suboptimal global availability of essential medicines. METHOD A systematic review of Pubmed, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian was performed to identify articles rel...

In 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration published its guide on exploratory investigational new drug (IND) studies with the goal of making the approach to early-stage, pilot clinical trials more flexible within the context of current regulations. The exploratory IND allows sponsors to initiate clinical trials of limited scale with reduced preclinical requirements. These studies may be imp...

General anesthetics have revolutionized medicine by facilitating invasive procedures, and have thus become essential drugs. However, detailed understanding of their molecular mechanisms remains elusive. A mechanism proposed over a century ago involving unspecified interactions with the lipid bilayer known as the unitary lipid-based hypothesis of anesthetic action, has been challenged by evidenc...

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF DRUGS DEpends on a long chain of factors: research and development (R&D) of an appropriate pharmaceutical agent, production, quality control, distribution, inventory control, reliable information for health care professionals and the general public, diagnosis, prescription, financial accessibility, drug dispensing, observance, and pharmacovigilance. At each level, those inv...

The WHO has previously produced recommendations on the essential drugs required for cancer therapy. Over the last five years several new anti cancer drugs have been aggressively marketed. Most of these are costly and produce only limited benefits. We have divided currently available anti-cancer drugs into three priority groups. Curable cancers and those cancers where the cost-benefit ratio clea...