Dear Editor,
The World Health Organisation (WHO) Essential Medicines List (EML) [1] informs countries about the minimum medicine items necessary to meet priority health needs of the population and guide national and institutional medicine lists, especially in Low Resource Income Countries. The current EML under medicines for ‘joint diseases in children’ does not reflect current best practice [2] and an important theme of work from the Paediatric Global Musculoskeletal Health Task Force (TF) [3] is to revise the listing for medicines relevant to paediatric rheumatic diseases.
Healthcare professionals working in paediatric rheumatology and who are TF members were invited to take part in an anonymous online survey WHO EML to explore which drugs they deemed to be ‘essential’ and ‘ideal’ for the clinical practice in their context. No reminders to the survey were sent. We had 97 responders, from 43 countries across all continents and mainly from low resource countries (Asia n = 51/97). Respondents had a range of 1–35 years of clinical practice and included consultant grade paediatric rheumatologists (n = 77), consultant general paediatricians with interest in rheumatology (n = 13), paediatric rheumatology trainees (n = 3), adult rheumatologists (n = 3) and a nurse working in paediatric rheumatology (n = 1). Survey data were analysed by applying descriptive statistics and free-text comments were analysed following standard procedures for qualitative analysis [4].
Most respondents (n = 70/97, 72%) reported that a revised EML would very likely improve access to medicines in their country, improve drug accessibility within their clinical practice, provide assistance when negotiating with healthcare agencies or insurance companies and further increase awareness about paediatric rheumatology issues. They deemed that the EML should list the drugs in Table 1; 80% respondents identified 5 agents as ‘essential’ (oral, intra-articular and intravenous corticosteroids, NSAIDS, Hydroxychloroquine and Methotrexate [oral and subcutaneous]) and a wide range of synthetic and biologic DMARDS as well as other immunosuppressive agents be included. This ‘cut off’ of 80% will form the basis of the TF application to the WHO to revise the EML with the submission planned for late 2020. It is our hope that raising awareness and improving access to appropriate therapy will lead to better outcomes for children with rheumatic diseases globally and allow for a targeted treatment approach [5].
Availability of data and materials
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article (and it's supplementary information files).
Abbreviations
- EML:
-
Essential Medicines List
- TF:
-
Paediatric Global Musculoskeletal Task Force
- WHO:
-
World Health Organisation
References
The WHO Essential Medicines List 2019 [Available from: https://www.who.int/medicines/publications/essentialmedicines/en/.
Foster HE, Scott C. Update the WHO EML to improve global paediatric rheumatology. Nat Rev Rheumatol. 2020;16:123.
Foster HE, Scott C, Tiderius CJ, Dobbs MB. The paediatric global musculoskeletal task force-‘towards better MSK health for all’. Pediatr Rheumatol. 2020;18(1):1–3.
Rapley T. Some pragmatics of data analysis. In: Silverman D, editor. Qualitative research:issues of theory, method and practice, vol. 3. London: Sage; 2011. p. 273–90.
Ravelli A, Consolaro A, Horneff G, Laxer RM, Lovell DJ, Wulffraat NM, et al. Treating juvenile idiopathic arthritis to target: recommendations of an international task force. Ann Rheum Dis. 2018;77(6):819–28.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to all the Paediatric Global Musculoskeletal Task Force members who participated in the survey.
Funding
Not applicable, this work was not funded.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Consortia
Contributions
The concept and case of need for the survey was led by HF and CS. All authors contributed to the survey content. NS set up the online survey and analysed the data. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethics approval and consent to participate
Formal ethical approval was not required. Survey respondents consented to participation through submitting a completed online survey response.
Consent for publication
Not applicable.
Competing interests
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
About this article
Cite this article
Scott, C., Smith, N., James, R. et al. Revising the WHO Essential Medicines List for paediatric rheumatology. Pediatr Rheumatol 19, 10 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12969-021-00496-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12969-021-00496-3