BEIJING, July 9 (Xinhua) -- China on Thursday unveiled its new national essential drug list comprising 794 medications, which serves as a guide for medical institutions' procurement and prescribing, an update eight years after the release of the current version.
According to China's National Health Commission, essential medicines are those that meet the country's basic health care needs, with reliable supplies, equitable access, and comparatively high cost-effectiveness.
Medicines on the updated list are preliminarily estimated to account for 71 percent of the total volume of drugs used by the country's public medical institutions, said Gong Xiangguang, a senior official of the commission.
The new list will take effect from September this year. According to the National Healthcare Security Administration, all newly added drugs on the list have been included in the national reimbursement drug list.
The update adds 68 pharmaceuticals and biological products to the previous version released in 2018, in line with growing demands for common illnesses at community and rural health care institutions and other highly prevalent diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure, according to Hu Xin, a chief pharmacist at the Beijing Hospital.
"The addition of these medicines will provide doctors with more treatment options and better satisfy patients' demands for medicines under different circumstances," Hu said.
The updated list also adds 31 medicines indicated for use in children, including five drugs developed specifically for pediatric use. It now contains 317 drugs with instructions on the usage for children, including 22 pediatric-specific medicines.
China released its first national essential drug list in 1982, and had updated the list three times before the latest version since the country launched a new round of national medical reform in 2009. ■
