Meeting of the Guideline Development Group for WHO Guideline on Country Pharmaceutical Pricing Policies

WHO has a mandate to support countries in ensuring that medicines are affordable by providing guidance on pricing policy on pharmaceutical products, as requested by Member States. Specifically, WHA resolution WHA71(8) requested the Director-General to elaborate a road map report that outlines the programming of WHO’s work on access to medicines and vaccines for the period 2019–2023; Guidance on pricing policy is one of the key milestones/deliverables specified in this road map: “policy guidance for more effective pricing policies to improve the affordability of essential health products to health systems and individuals”. The overall purpose of the GDG meeting is to update evidence-based recommendations regarding pharmaceutical pricing policies, based on the evidence synthesized in systematic reviews of the literature. The proposed Group Meeting involves experts from various WHO regions and personnel from WHO Clusters. All invited participants have worked with components of healthcare system closely related to pricing of healthcare services or products, and access to pharmaceutical products. It includes experts known to have relevant expertise from pricing, systematic review, policy implementation, ethical aspects of distributing scarce resources, to patient perspectives.