Rational Use of Essential Medicines

The focus in Rational use is on supporting countries to implement cost effective interventions aiming at improving the rational use of medicines and traditional medicines by health professionals and consumers.

With support from WHO, to-date, 39 countries in the region have developed essential medicines list linked to standard treatment guidelines for the most common diseases, and 25 countries have developed national medicine formularies. In many countries, national list of essential medicine are used to guide selection of medicines for procurement, good prescribing and dispensing practices mainly in the public sector.