World Health Organization’s Essential Medicines List 2017: Addresses the global threat of antibiotic resistance

INTRODUCTION The availability of safe and effective medicines is an integral part of the quality of any health system.[1] To attain universal health coverage, ensuring prompt access to required medicines for all individuals, regardless of the setting or time, is an indispensable element.[1] The Essential Medicines List is a list of drugs periodically revised by the World Health Organization (WHO) after every 2 years.[1] This list acts as a guiding document for most of the nation to plan and ensure the availability of a set of medicines that are essential for maintaining the health standards of a major segment of their populations.[1] ESSENTIAL MEDICINES LIST The WHO has released a revised list for the year 2017, and this comprises more than 430 drugs, which are a must for meeting the public health requirements of the majority of the people.[1] However, the most significant modification has been done in the field of classifying antibiotics into three categories, namely access, watch, and reserve, along with the indications for the use of each one of them.[1] The rationale behind this change is to ensure the availability of antibiotics at times of need, and that the right antibiotics are administered for the right infections.[1-3] It is anticipated that such revision will not only improve the treatment outcome, but will even reduce the risk of the emergence of drug resistance, and thus clinicians will always have some antibiotic available to them, once common drugs fail to cure the infection.[1,3,4] ESSENTIAL CONSIDERATIONS The antibiotics in the access group (like amoxicillin) should be available every time for the treatment of a broad range of common infections, whereas antibiotics within the watch group (such as ciprofloxacin) are the first or second choice of antibiotics recommended for a small number of infections, and should be used vigilantly to avert the risk of further development of resistance.[1] Finally, the antibiotics in the reserve group (viz. cephalosporins) should be acknowledged as the last choice and employed only when all other options have failed.[1] Moreover, having such an approach will aid the health program managers in ensuring that people who need antibiotics, should have easy access to them and that too the right one, to prevent the risk of antibiotic resistance.[1,4,5] CONCLUSION To conclude, the updated list of essential medicines is an extremely effective way to promote the standardized use of antibiotics, and simultaneously warrant that the correct medicine is easily available for the fitting patients at the correct time, and it will indirectly minimize the risk of antibiotic resistance. Author contributions SRS contributed to the conception or design of the work, drafting of the work, approval of the final version of the manuscript, and agreeing on all aspects of the work. PSB contributed to the literature review, revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content, approval of the final version of the manuscript, and agreed on all aspects of the work. HGM contributed to revising the draft, approving the final version of the manuscript, and agreeing on all aspects of the work. Financial support and sponsorship Nil. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest.