Dutch evaluation reports on web

The Dutch Medicines Evaluation Agency is putting all its evaluation reports on drugs newly registered in the Netherlands on its web site. http://www.cbg-meb.nl

Public disclosure is intended to help doctors and pharmacists to understand the clinical background to recent regulatory decisions.

Compulsory licensing

The Consumer Project on Technology has made significant additions to its web page on compulsory licensing at: http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/cl

The page now has references to 15 recent disputes concerning compulsory licences in the USA, plus information about compulsory licensing in 16 other countries.

Drug use evaluation

A good source of information on pharmacy-related web resources on drug use evaluation can be found at: http://www.rupert.net/~rtrinkle/dur.htm

EURODURG

The European Drug Utilization Research Group’s web site contains information on its bulletin and about national groups, plus useful addresses and links to other web sites. Find it at: http://www.eurodurg.org

Quantity use of medicines in Australia

A database on quality use of medicines activities in Australia is now accessible via the World Wide Web: http://www.qum.health.gov.au

The database can be found by clicking on the link “Quality Use of Medicines Mapping Project”, and it currently contains details of over 700 projects.

Antiretroviral newsletter released

The first issue of the WHO Western Pacific Region HIV-AIDS Antiretroviral Newsletter has been released. It can be accessed on the WHO/Western Pacific Regional Office web site (under publications) at: http://www.who.org.ph/technical/programme/std.htm

The DRUGNET site

What pharmaceutical reforms have occurred in Ukraine? What is the purpose of a national drug policy? What antibiotics are on the Essential Drugs List of Kyrgyzstan? Are drug prices regulated in the Republic of Moldova? What were the total drug sales in Armenia last year? All these questions...plus many more are answered on a new web site: www.who.dk/ch/pha/NIS

It is more than a year since the WHO Regional Office for Europe Special Project for the Newly Independent States on Pharmaceuticals sent out questionnaires to regulatory authorities to obtain information for the DRUGNET web site. The site was launched at the end of 1998. It contains a mixture of information about the pharmaceutical sectors in specific countries, pharmaceutical reforms in general and the WHO Special Project on Pharmaceuticals. The pages are side-by-side in Russian and English. The site will expand over the next few months as information is added.

In addition, the Pharmaceuticals Programme of the WHO Regional Office for Europe has relaunched its web site at: http://www.who.dk/ch/pha.

Among other things, the site describes the Programme’s main areas of work, features and news items, a documentation list and a directory of medicines authorities in all European countries. Details are also given of EuroPharm Forum (a forum of national pharmaceutical associations in Europe).

More to see on EDM’s homepage

The Department of Essential Drugs and Other Medicines’ homepage has been greatly expanded and is now even more user friendly. As well as introducing the essential drugs concept, national drug policies, and the work of WHO and EDM, more of the Department’s documents can be viewed and downloaded. You can find many of the Health Financing and Economics series (for example, the English and French versions of Globalization and Assess to Drugs) and of EDM’s research series. The new edition of the interagency Guidelines for Drug Donations and Guidelines for Safe Disposal of Pharmaceuticals in and after Emergencies are both available.

The complete English, French and Spanish versions of the Monitor (from number 22 onwards) can be found in PDF format.

The improvements to the homepage are not finished yet. It is planned to put all major EDM documents on line in all language versions, (see EDM-28 for further details).

Check us out at: http://www.who.int/dap/edm.html

The Bulletin revised homepage

The Bulletin of the World Health Organization has a revised homepage: http://www.who.int/bulletin

The page includes access to the table of contents for each issue, abstracts (html) and full-text (pdf) of all articles, news items and guidelines for contributors.