Talk:WHO Model List of Essential Medicines

ranitidine availability
Ranitidine is not currently available in the UK or globally. It has been discontinued as a precaution because it may contain a small amount of an impurity that has been linked to an increased risk of cancer in animals. Maybe update the page to the current replacement, usually Famotidine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr zoidberg590 (talk • contribs) 02:00, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Heads up: 20th edition
The 20th edition has just come out. Many major updates, especially on the antimicrobials front. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 18:34, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks and have updated. Still need to improve the individual articles. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 05:25, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Dosage
At Mefloquine[note 24] we give a dosage. Not wanting to remove this from a featured list, but is this corect? Carl Fredrik talk 16:12, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
 * It is in a note rather than the text. I am easy either way. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 05:22, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

deletion by doc James
The lede is NOT reflected in the body -as so often is the case btw- and I was merely reflecting that.

Doc James should keep his personal vendettas against me (see his comments on arbcompages in cases where he has not at all been involved) on the talk pages, instead of edit warring by reverting a perfectly reasonable edit.--Wuerzele (talk) 08:09, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
 * We keep references in the lead per WP:MEDMOS.
 * No need to repeat the lead in the body as this is a "list" article.
 * You will need consensus. Please not WP:BRD Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 08:26, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
 * do you want me to reply in your pluralis maiestatis language ?
 * We keep the lede following the body per WP:MOS.
 * No need to delete, WP:BRD.
 * You will need to first apologize for edit warring by reverting another good faith edit (which you very well know but do not acknowledge as such) Do not wikilawyer, but discuss content.  --Wuerzele (talk) 09:25, 23 December 2017 (UTC).
 * This is an FA and that was not an improvement. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 23:15, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

master james, ping me (ive said that about every time) if you decide to reply. stop wikilawyering with abbreviations (FA?). you obstruct solutions.--Wuerzele (talk) 09:15, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

contains the medications considered to be most effective and safe to meet the most important needs in a health system
The definition above is - as I can see it - not entirely correct. The medicines on the list are essential, but not necessary the most safe or effective ones; safety is always related to the danger of the treated condition, if the condition is more dangerous you will even accept a less save medicine. Effectivitity is often related to very specific condition which can be rare. As I understand is this a list of treatments for the most common conditions. I therefore propose to change the definition to "contains the medications considered to be essential to meet the most important needs in a health system". Vibackup (talk) 09:33, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

2019 update
I've updated the text to reflect the 21st Model List. Will update the individual articles accordingly soon. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 02:05, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

List of essential medicines on each medicine’s article
After reading many articles about different medicines, I have noticed the phrase “It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, the safest and most effective medicines needed in a health system”. Saying the first part, “ It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines” with a link to this article is fine but the second part needs to be omitted. Someone keeps adding it to every medicine’s article.

There is no point in adding the phrase “the safest and most effective medicines needed in a health system“ to every article. Readers can click on the link to this article if they are interested or do not know what the WHO’s list if essential medicines is.

If anyone objects, please reply below. Otherwise I will be going through the list and editing out the phrase on each article. SneaselxLv94 (talk) 22:42, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
 * No strong position at this point. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 00:53, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
 * SneaselxLv94, I think actually we need to review if a sentence in the lead is the best way to assert a simple repetitious binary fact. I wonder if an infobox field is better. This sentence is AFAICS never repeated in the article body, and therefore not something the article writers consider worthy of extensive comment, making its presence in the lead hard to justify per WP:LEAD. An info box field could include the values "core" and "complementary" -- medicines that are only in the latter group are not "the safest and most effective medicines needed in a health system" -- they either require facilities or experts not normally found in basic healthcare, or have higher costs or not as cost effective in a variety of settings. Perhaps it is better to copy this discussion to WT:MED for further comment. -- Colin°Talk 10:10, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with you, Colin. Upon further investigation, it appears Doc James  was the one who added the phrase to every medicine's article. This is in violation of WP:SPAM under Advertising since the phrase can be viewed as a promotion of the idea, regardless of whether it is true or not. The phrase is not cited either. I have no qualms about adding it into an infobox. It is pointless to add the phrase in the text body. A lot of the medicines on this list can be associated to other lists of medications like List of antibiotics, List of antiviral drugs, Analgesics, etc. SneaselxLv94 (talk) 17:53, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
 * An infobox field could also automatically populate Category:World Health Organization essential medicines (or subcats if there are core/complementary or other subsets). DMacks (talk) 04:13, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Getting the actual list
I came to this page to get the 2021 list. Can someone help? I went to the WHO website linked under the external section of the article. When I downloaded the excel file it had heaps of "removed" medicines. All I want is a simple list of the 500 names of whatever it is. I'm thank. Kelly222 (talk) 05:13, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

α idiocy
"An α indicates a medicine is only on the complementary list."

Yet you have medicines listed both without, and with, α. Examples:

Valproic acid (sodium valproate)[note 18]

Valproic acid (sodium valproate)α

-another one-

Valganciclovir[note 46]

Valganciclovirα[note 48]

There may be others. 5.12.56.190 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 15:44, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

lede does not reflect body
I realize that this is a list, but there should be sections in the body supporting the lede. Why is this not the case here? Because tehere are no sections of definition, history etc everybody seems to cram stuff into the lede, and it has become hypertrophied. Especially at the end when it discusses the list of children the lede has become confusing.

I dont get how this became a starred article. Wuerzele (talk) 15:15, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Duplicate entries and notes
@Whywhenwhohow Fluoxetine is currently listed twice: once with a note listing its alternatives, the second time with the greek letter alpha (α) denoting that it is on a complementary list. However, Oxamniquine is listed once with both a note and an α symbol. In my mind, the listing for Oxamniquine is the correct method. We can have more than one note per entry instead of a single note and several entires. Can you explain your thinking on why there should be duplicate entries for medicines on the core and complementary lists? Thank you. -- RickyCourtney (talk) 20:06, 29 January 2023 (UTC)


 * @RickyCourtney I find that confusing too, so I've started this discussion. Dr. Vogel (talk) 22:54, 29 January 2023 (UTC)