(EDM/PAR, 28 March 2002)

Agenda Item 8

Change of name of the Expert Committee

As part of the new procedures for updating and disseminating the Model List of Essential Medicines, WHO has started to use the term “essential medicines” as an alternative to “essential drugs”.

Reasons for the change

  • The term “medicines” is more commonly used to describe pharmaceutical preparations used in clinical health care practice
  • For non-native English speakers drugs are frequently associated with narcotic or illicit drugs, hard drugs. It is not always clear what a “national drug policy” is
  • In French and Spanish this ambiguity does not exist: médicaments essentiels and medicamentos esenciales are the official terms already
  • The timing of the change is probably right. The 25-year anniversary of Essential Medicines this year and the start of the Essential Medicines Library create a good opportunity to introduce the new name
  • Potential disadvantages of the change:
    The concept of essential drugs and the Action Programme on Essential Drugs have been well-known “brand-names” of WHO for the last 25 years. However, since the creation of the WHO Department of Essential Drugs and Medicines Policy the name of the Action Programme has been used much less (the country support team is still called DAP: Drug Action Programme). It could be argued that the word “essential” is the most important – and that will remain of course.
  • The names of the Model List of Essential Drugs and the Expert Committee on the Use of Essential Drugs are well-known but will have to change.
  • The name of the Department of Essential Drugs and Medicines Policy and its acronym EDM may ultimately have to change as well. The cluster name is Health Technology and Pharmaceuticals.

Historical overview of the names of the Expert Committee

The first Expert Committee in 1977 was called Expert Committee on the Selection of Essential Drugs; and the title of the Report was The Selection of Essential Drugs[1]. The same names were used for the second meeting and report of 1979. However, at the third meeting in 1982 the Committee was called the Expert Committee on the Use of Essential Drugs and the report was called The Use of Essential Drugs.[2] These names have been used since then.

Proposal by the Secretariat

The Secretariat proposes to change the name of the Expert Committee on the Use of Essential Drugs into Expert Committee on the Selection of Essential Medicines. In summary, the reasons for this change are the following:

  1. The term “medicines” is more commonly used to describe pharmaceutical preparations used in clinical health care practice. Non-native English speakers frequently associate the word drugs with narcotic or illicit drugs while this ambiguity does not exist in French and Spanish.
  2. The terms of reference for the Expert Committee focus on the selection of essential medicines rather than on the much wider subject of use.

[1] The Selection of Essential Drugs. Geneva: WHO; 1977, Technical Report Series 615

[2] The Use of Essential Drugs. Geneva: WHO; 1983, Technical Report Series 685