Kathmandu, September 9

The World Health Organisation today called on countries, including Nepal, across the South-East Asia Region to take bold action to ensure all people everywhere have access to safe, efficacious, quality and affordable medical products, laying particular emphasis on the need to leverage collective strengths via greater inter-country cooperation.

“Overcoming barriers and ensuring all people everywhere can access essential medicines is one of WHO South-East Asia’s priority areas of work, and is vital to achieving universal health coverage, and with it the Sustainable Development Goal of health and well-being for all. Significant progress has been made in recent years, including the creation of the South-East Asia Regulatory Network in 2016, which pools the region’s regulatory resources to enhance the safety and quality of medicines,” Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, regional director, WHO South-East Asia Region, said at the  70th  session of the Regional Committee being held in Male of Maldives. She stressed on the need to build on that progress and strengthen regional cooperation.

The Regional Committee is the highest decision-making body for public health in the South-East Asia Region, and includes health ministers and senior health ministry officials of the region’s 11 member countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-Leste.

According to WHO, across the South-East Asia Region, an estimated 65 million people are pushed into poverty due to out-of-pocket health-care payments.

Poor-quality or unsafe medicines likewise affects peoples’ ability to access the treatment they need, when they need it, while weak supply chains and inefficient procurement provide similar barriers. Dr Khetrapal Singh outlined five key areas where countries can work together, and with WHO, to drive substantial gains in improving access to drugs.

“First, inter-country and regional collaboration on public procurement and pricing can be scaled up, including through sharing information on medicines prices. This will enhance countries’ negotiating positions when they are purchasing on the international market,” she said.

Second, the regional director emphasised, is the need to fully operationalise the SEARN initiative and take advantage of comparative strengths in regulatory capacity. “Third, there is great potential for increased use of regionally produced, quality generic products,” she stressed.

Fourth, Dr Khetrapal Singh noted that rational use of medicines – especially antimicrobials – is vitally important region-wide to ensure these drugs remain fit for purpose.