Shaun O’Connor, ISOPP President, and I had a very constructive discussion with Dr L Moja from the WHO Essential Medicines List (EML) Secretariat. The WHO EML exercise is undergoing a transformation to include Standard of Care Treatment Regimens for various Cancers that are tailored to resource constrained settings. These Regimens are going to become part of an EML Handbook.

ISOPP has been invited to collaborate in the creation of the Handbook, which as a first step, will commence with generation of an initial set of 4 of these Treatment Regimens.  What WHO is asking for from ISOPP is to provide feedback from the point of view of an Oncology Pharmacist on the feasibility/practicality/challenges and pitfalls of implementing and delivering these chemotherapy regimens in the Low and Middle Income Country (LMIC) context.  To this end they are asking for 2-3 point of contact Pharmacists from ISOPP that work in the LMIC setting to review and provide this type of feedback on these treatment regimens.  The hope is to have these regimens written, reviewed and ready to present to the EML Expert panel at its next scheduled meeting in April of 2021.  

While we have a number of members on the Advocacy Task Force that are from LMICs we need a more robust cadre of members (especially from Latin / South America) to join the Advocacy Task Force and volunteer to be one of these contact pharmacists or be a resource and support (with the rest of the Task Force) to the contact pharmacists.  Members from non LMIC countries are welcome to join as well.  We all have something to contribute!

At this point with only 4 regimens being developed, I don’t anticipate this to be a hugely onerous amount of work, but more regimens will be forthcoming which is why we want to learn from our engagement in this initial round of four.

This is a very exciting opportunity for ISOPP and Oncology Pharmacy globally and I encourage you to take part in this very worthwhile endeavor.

If you are interested, please email me at john.wiernikowski@gmail.com with a copy to ISOPP’s Society Management Office at services@isopp.org. I will then be in touch with regards to next steps.  

With my kindest regards,
John T. Wiernikowski, PharmD, FISOPP, FCAPhO
ISOPP Advocacy Task Force Chair