WFSA joined a constituency statement to 74th WHO Regional Committee for Europe calling for Member states to prioritise access to essential medicines as part of their health emergency planning.
Agenda Item 10: Health emergency preparedness, response and resilience in the WHO European Region 2024–2029: a new regional strategy and action plan (Preparedness 2.0)
At this very moment, in this region, people in emergencies and humanitarian crises are living and dying with serious health-related suffering because they lack access to essential medicines, including those under international control. Civilians at risk of vulnerabilities – pregnant women, mothers, babies, older people, people with disabilities, and people of all ages who are seriously injured and chronically ill – are more likely to experience severe untreated physical pain along with psychological, social, and spiritual suffering.
Surprisingly, the Strategy and Action Plan, while commendable, is missing the word “medicines.” We call for language that explicitly and unambiguously places essential medicines at the core of health emergency preparedness, response and resilience.
Tragically, essential medicines listed in section 2 of the WHO Model List are frequently unavailable during health emergencies. Their absence leads to egregious consequences such as:
- Under-resourced surgical and intensive care services lack effective anaesthesia or medical oxygen
- Unrelieved, severe pain from traumatic fractures, wounds, and burns1
- Untreated mental health conditions
- Unplanned discontinuation of cancer care and treatment
- Lack of proper palliative care for acute conditions and chronic, non-communicable diseases,.
- Lack of prenatal health care and essential medicines for pregnant women, mothers and newborns.
The high cost and limited availability of medicines in conflict, disaster relief, and humanitarian settings are persistent obstacles to health system resilience. Even well-resourced health systems experienced shortages of morphine and midazolam during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Table 3 must explicitly include “essential medicines” in addition to “essential services” and “medical products”. This important document is incomplete without reference to the legal and logistical complexity of safe supply chains, storage, prescribing, administration and appropriate disposal of medicines and vaccines.
We welcome the inclusion of international law under Essential health service delivery (Table 3, item 3.4), and respectfully suggest as a key resource the International Narcotics Control Board’s Timely Supply of Controlled Substances during Emergency Situations.
We call upon the Member States and the WHO to support aid agencies working in health emergencies to:
- Include adequate supplies of oral and injectable essential medicines in the WHO Model List in humanitarian aid response packages.
- Ensure adequate supplies of essential life-saving medicines such as for surgery and oncology treatment, and for the relief of serious, health-related suffering, including end-of-life care.
- Ensure the availability of a sufficiently trained workforce that has the necessary equipment to deliver medicines in a safe working environment.
- Provide all emergency healthcare workers with guidelines on the safe use and distribution of essential medicines, including opioids.
- Integrate mechanisms of ongoing analysis and evaluation of medicines’ supply.
- Ensure the availability of appropriate formulations for all ages, with special attention to children, older people, and people with disabilities.
- Improve public health communication and invest in health literacy to protect against misinformation.
Constituency statement signed by:
- International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care
- European Disability Forum
- European Association for Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion
- World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists
- European Respiratory Society
