Essential medicines

It is our pleasure to introduce the fourth edition of the Standard Treatment Guidelines and Essential Medicines List for Primary Health Care. In keeping with the goals of the National Drug Policy, the review was done to keep pace with the advances in the fi eld of medicine. Changes in this edition are a refl ection of current epidemiology norms and recent developments in medicine.

The challenges facing the health sector are numerous but not insurmountable. The effective and effi cient use of medicines will go a long way towards meeting these challenges.

Our goal of evidence based medicine selection has been strengthened in this edition. Affordability, without compromising quality, has been taken into account.

INTRODUCTION

It is my pleasure to introduce the third edition of the Standard Treatment Guidelines and Essential Medicines List for Hospital Level. This edition marks the culmination of an intense and thorough review process.

The Standard Treatment Guidelines have been aligned with current developments in medicine and scientifi c advances. Clinical evidence was used in the selection of medicines. In addition, prevailing medicine cost, affordability, as well as practice implications were taken into consideration. Furthermore, harmonisation with priority guidelines within the Department of Health has also been attained.

Lessons for the implementation of the Essential Drugs Programme within districts.Nurses are the frontline health providers for most people in South Africa today. Many nurses feel ill-equipped for their new role as clinical nursing practitioners. At the same time, clinics often experience shortages of medicines. A process of training and support is needed to ensure that medicines are prescribed and dispensed in a rational and cost-efficient manner.

The rapid escalation of drug costs is a world wide problem. But by all accounts, drug prices in South Africa's private sector are among the highest in the world. The South African government has responded to this problem by way of developing a national drug policy . An important element of this is an essential drugs programme which has, in the first instance, been developed for the public sector primary health care facilities.