Monitoring and evaluation ^f help determine what has been achieved (or not achieved). Accordingly, they provide important information as to whether planning and strategies are satisfactory, or whether they need to be modified or even reworked.

^f “Monitoring” refers to reviewing, on a continuous basis, the degree to which activities are completed and targets are being met. This allows corrective action to be taken during implementation. “Evaluation” refers to analysing progress towards meeting established objectives and goals. It provides feedback on whether plans have been met and the reasons for success or failure; it should also provide direction for future plans.

In other words, monitoring and evaluation are crucial to successful implementation of national drug policies, programmes and strategies, and to achieving the pharmaceutical objectives of access to and rational use of quality drugs in particular.

Pharmaceutical indicators can greatly facilitate the tasks of monitoring and evaluation since they serve as simple, objective and standard measures for assessing and describing pharmaceutical sectors and activities. Moreover, they can be compared over a period of time and used to determine and assess pharmaceutical trends.

WHO has identified and grouped pharmaceutical indicators into three levels (see Figure 9 in Chapter 5) in order to make the tasks of monitoring and evaluation easier for ministries of health, aid agencies, NGOs and other stakeholders. ^{77, 78}

WHO used level I indicators to collect information on pharmaceutical structure and process for the World Drug Situation 2000 survey, and to develop a database of pharmaceutical country information. This set of indicators can also be used as a checklist by countries when they are monitoring the activities and components of their pharmaceutical sectors, or as a tool for rapid assessment of a pharmaceutical sector.

The level II indicators can be used to collect systematic data for describing the outcome and impact of national drug policies and national drug programmes.