Welcome to The Lancet Commission on Essential Medicines Policies website

In summer 2014 The Lancet commissioned a group of 21 independent experts in a variety of disciplines to generate a report to be published in Fall 2016, about 30 years after the Nairobi Conference on the Rational Use of Drugs.

Goals of the Commission

The goals of The Lancet Commission on Essential Medicines Policies were:

  • Re-confirming the ongoing relevance, and the crucial need of comprehensive essential medicines policies to achieve broader global health and sustainable development goals, especially universal health coverage
  • Formulating recommendations for global essential medicine policies for the next two decades

Tasks of the Commission

  • Synthesize lessons learned from the first 30 years of essential medicines policies’ development and implementation
  • Develop an agenda for the next 20 years of institutional, regional, national and global policies on essential medicines and other health technologies
  • Raise global awareness of the relevance of essential medicine policies in achieving global health and sustainable development goals, with special attention paid to universal health coverage
  • Define the current needs of operational research that contributes to increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of essential medicines policies and programmes

On this website you can find more information about the work of the Commission and the report that was published on Nov 8 2016.

We are grateful for the generous support of the Lancet Commission on Essential Medicines Policies by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization.  We would also like to acknowledge all the commissioners and their affiliated organizations providing support.  

Bill_and_Melinda_Gates_Foundation