The WHO Model List of Essential Medicines serves as a guide for countries or regional authorities to prioritize medicines in accordance with local priorities and treatment guidelines. It is updated every 2 years by the WHO Expert Committee on Selection and the Use of Medicines. The latest edition was published in 2023 and contains more than 500 medicines that meet priority health needs globally, including many antimicrobial medicines. The next update is planned for April 2025. In even-numbered years, applications presenting new medicines are developed for review by the Expert Committee. In odd-numbered years, the technical report series (TRS) (i.e. the document summarising the committee’s decisions) is developed.
Recognizing the importance of authoritative, evidence-based guidance for the optimal use of antibiotics to tackle antimicrobial resistance, WHO developed and published the AWaRe (Access, Watch, Reserve) antibiotic book in 2022. The AWaRe book provides concise, evidence-based guidance on the choice of antibiotic, dose, route of administration, and duration of treatment for more than 30 of the most common clinical infections in children and adults in both primary health care and hospital settings. The information included in the book supports the recommendations for antibiotics listed on the WHO Model Lists of Essential Medicines and Essential Medicines Children and the WHO AWaRe classification of antibiotics. A similar approach is followed for cancer medicines, with a section of the Model List of Essential Medicines dedicated to innovative medicines used against multiple types of cancer.
To ensure the greatest utility of recommendations in the Model List and AWaRe, considerable planning and strategic activities are undertaken by the WHO Essential Medicines Team Secretariat to prepare the background documents that will support the Expert Committee in its endeavour.
Deliverables
- Deliverable 1: Review and write the evaluation of technical documents (including internal and external applications) for the 2025 EML Expert Committee meeting.
Expected by 30 January 2025 - Deliverable 2: Executive Summary Report and the Technical Report of the 24th update of the Model List of Essential Medicines.
Expected by 30 April 2025 - Deliverable 3: Write the technical input to scientific manuscripts for submission to peer-reviewed journals on topics related to essential antimicrobial medicines, AWaRe and cancer recommendations, which will be originated after the 2025 Expert Committee meeting.
Expected by 30 May 2025
Qualifications, experience, skills and languages
Educational Qualifications:
Essential:
- First university degree in pharmacy, or medicine, or human biology.
Desirable:
- PhD in infectious diseases or immunology or public health.
Experience:
Essential:
- 2 to 5 years direct experiences in guideline panels, hospital drug therapeutics committees, and/or national or international authorities in charge of recommendations on selection and use of medicines.
Desirable:
- A minimum of 10 scientific publications evaluating clinical interventions in SCOPUS-indexed journals and a total of at least 100 citations in SCOPUS-indexed journals in the last 5 years.
- Experience working in low- and middle-income countries and clinical epidemiology background.
- Previous experience in WHO Expert Committees and Panels procedures.
- Experience in the use of GRADE.
Skills:
Essential:
- Strong technical knowledge in medicines selection and use and antimicrobial stewardship;
- Strong technical knowledge about WHO Expert Committee and Panel procedures;
- Excellent technical writing skills;
- Good communication and interpersonal skills with the ability to work in a multicultural team and maintain effective working relationships with recognized Experts and stakeholders;
- Strong methodological (clinical epidemiology) and analytical skills with the ability to conduct research, identify and analyse literature relevant to the programme area;
- Good planning and organizational skills with attention to detail and with the ability to multi-task and work under pressure;
- Strong IT skills: Word, Excel, presentation software, databases and web navigators.
