Bitter Pills:Medicines & The Third World Poor | Page 202

2. COMPREHENSIVE NATIONAL DRUG POLICY
No country can solve the problems without a comprehensive national drug policy
tailored to its specific needs. Key elements and important stages in implementing
the policy include the following:
- Identification of priority health problems affecting the poor majority.
- Setting up a permanent multi-disciplinary team with the task of identifying
which drugs are essential to the country's needs and to draw up a national
formulary.
- Identification of the most vital drugs (to be given priority, for instance, in
foreign exchange allocations and in setting up local production). More limited
selections of drugs to be used by different categories of health workers also
need to be drawn up.
- Rationalisation of the private market by withdrawing registration from nonessential, wasteful and 'problem' drugs not included in the national formulary.
- Making the use of generic names compulsory in prescribing, training, labelling
etc.
- Ensuring that paramedics, doctors, nurses and other health wor