By John T Wiernikowski, ISOPP Advocacy Task Force Chair

I am happy to share that things are moving forward on a number of fronts with the ISOPP Advocacy Task Force.  

The COVID-19 pandemic predictably put the activities of many organizations involved in international health either on temporary hold or re-focused on more immediate health care systems/facility planning for patients with and without malignant disease. The activity of the WHO Essential Medicines List (EML) Secretariat were one of those notably affected.  Now that the pandemic is (albeit far from over) slowly coming under control, some of these activities are re-initiating.  ISOPP (via this Task Force) has been recently invited to participate in a number of these activities.  

First, we were invited by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) to participate in a Master Course for webinar based dissemination on the importance of access to essential medicines and barriers to ensuring access.  More information on this course can be found here: https://www.uicc.org/what-we-do/capacity-building/master-courses

ISOPP was invited to participate in the second module of this course around drug access, supply chains, and barriers to access in LMICs.  The call to participate was immediately answered by Advocacy Task Force members: Irene Weru from Kenya, Annemeri Livinalli from Brazil, and Bo Yu from China.  Indeed, of the organizations invited to participate, ISOPP was the first to respond and provide speakers.  The webinar recordings have now been completed and initial feedback from UICC is very positive.  I want to thank and acknowledge the hard work these individuals did to prepare for these presentations in a very quick timeline.  They have represented our profession and ISOPP very positively.  Thank You!

At more or less the same time, I was also re-contacted by Dr. Lorenzo Moja from the WHO EML Secretariat to invite ISOPP to participate in a new endeavor emanating from the WHO EML.  The WHO is embarking on producing standardized chemotherapy treatment regimens that are tailored to resource limited settings.  These treatment regimens will accompany the next iteration of the WHO EML in a unified EML and Cancer Treatment Manual.  Dr. Moja recognized after meeting with me last year and discussing what ISOPP could realistically bring to the EML process; that having oncology pharmacists, especially those working in LMIC settings would be invaluable to provide practical feedback on barriers/pitfalls (or not) to implementing these treatment regimens in the LMIC context.  To this end, Dr. Moja, myself, and ISOPP President Shaun O’Connor had a web-meeting at the end of July to discuss ISOPP’s participation in this endeavor.  ISOPP via our Task Force has been asked to provide feedback/consultation on the first 4 treatment regimens for LMICs that will be presented to the WHO EML Secretariat at its next meeting in April of 2021.  While the entire Task Force will participate in this exercise (and why you received a letter from me calling for some more members from LMICs to join us), ISOPP’s points of contact with WHO for this initial round will be: Mayi Nanyonga from Uganda; Mario J Sobreira from Brazil and Mela Dewi from Indonesia.   Thank you to these members for coming forward to be our ambassadors.  Thank you as well to the great response to the call for more members from LMICs to provide additional sets of eyes and feedback on the treatment regimens.  The response from Asia and Africa have been overwhelming, we could certainly use a few more members from Latin/South America.  To be clear, members from any country (including high income countries) are welcome.

As we await the final round of feedback from ISOPP Members, and publication of the next iteration of ISOPP Global Oncology Pharmacy Standards of Practice; we will be gearing up to undertake an audit (hopefully with help of UICC, and perhaps WHO) of the standards in LMIC institutions to identify any key/common deficiencies that we can start to try and address.

I am grateful to this Task Force’s membership and to the ISOPP Secretariat for their patience as we endured this waiting period to get moving.

Yours,

John T Wiernikowski, PharmD, FISOPP, FCAPhO
Chair, ISOPP Advocacy Task Force