How is the WHO working to ensure every child with cancer gets access to safe, effective medicines?
The WHO Prequalification Unit has released its first official call to manufacturers, encouraging the evaluation and production of quality-assured, age-appropriate cancer therapies worldwide.
Santiago Millan, Technical Lead, Global Platform for Access to Childhood Cancer Medicines at World Health Organization (WHO), recently highlighted a major milestone on LinkedIn:
“Excited to share that WHO has launched its first-ever invitation to manufacturers to submit an expression of interest (EOI) for the Prequalification of childhood cancer medicines, marking an important milestone in efforts to improve access to quality-assured and child-friendly cancer treatments worldwide!
As we mark Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, this represents another important step toward ensuring that children everywhere can access the medicines they need.
The EOI includes 12 priority products:
- six medicines requiring child-friendly formulations
- six medicines selected because of persistent global access and supply gaps.
Together, they reflect priorities identified through consultations coordinated by the Global Accelerator for Paediatric Formulations (GAP-f) and the Global Platform for Access to Childhood Cancer Medicines (Global Platform).
Together, these efforts have helped identify priority medicines, address formulation and supply gaps, and create a pathway for manufacturers to bring needed products forward for evaluation.
The invitation is also an important step in the Global Platform’s market-shaping efforts, helping align global supply and demand and translate country needs into concrete actions that can strengthen the availability and affordability of essential childhood cancer medicines. More on the market shaping strategy coming soon!
We encourage manufacturers of relevant products to review the invitation and engage with WHO’s Prequalification Unit to help expand the pool of quality-assured medicines available for children with cancer around the world.”
Adding to this, Anjali Srivastava, Global Health Consultant at World Health Organization, added:
” ‘This is just the beginning.’ – Alessio Mola, quoting my amazing colleague.
Kudos to the entire cancer team on the launch of WHO’s first-ever Expression of Interest (EOI) for the Prequalification of childhood cancer medicines.
It is incredibly meaningful and a personal milestone to see the results of this collective effort (years in the making with the WHO Cancer team and the Global Accelerator for Paediatric Formulations (GAP‑f)) to reach this stage. We are deeply grateful to all the stakeholders, collaborators, technical experts, clinicians, pharmacists, partners, and country representatives from around the world who contributed their time and expertise to the PADO and TPP meetings and the Global Platform’s work.
Together, the PADO and TPP processes informed industry colleagues of six prioritized childhood cancer medicines requiring more child-friendly formulations as they still mainly use adult formulations. Through the Global Platform, six additional medicines were flagged and prioritized because of persistent global access and supply gaps.
The next step is to bring these priorities to manufacturers with a call to action to submit an EOI to turn identified needs into action-developing better medicines for children and improving the availability of essential treatments where access remains critically limited.
There are still many miles to go – for now we can celebrate how far we have come.”
Find out more:
WHO Flags Six Essential Childhood Cancer Medicines Facing Critical Access Gaps
