Evaluation of essential medicines lists for medical and veterinary practice

In modern conditions, the quality of veterinary care directly depends not only on the professional level of the staff, but also on the availability of medicines. For practicing veterinarians and pet owners, the possibility of purchasing a particular drug is often associated not only with its cost, but also with the peculiarities of the state regulations for the registration, circulation and availability of certain drugs in the pharmacy network. In modern veterinary medicine of the Russian Federation, the concept of essential drugs (EM) has not been defined and a list of vital and essential drugs (EDL) has not been created. The lists allow government agencies to select medicines according to proven effectiveness in the face of budgetary constraints. The first EML for cats and dogs was published by the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) only on January 20, 2020. The goal of the EML is to improve and support regulatory oversight of ensuring the availability of essential medicines, pharmacovigilance, counteracting the growth of the illegal, counterfeit market for pharmaceutical products. Practitioners have been given the opportunity to prevent and treat the most common, primary diseases of dogs and cats, while maintaining appropriate animal welfare standards, the foundations of which are enshrined in Russia at the legislative level. In the state system for monitoring the use of drugs Galen, to date, 2169 drug names are registered, the description of which includes the main points of drug characteristics and the names of pharmacotherapeutic groups with codes of the anatomical-therapeutic-chemical (ATC-vet) classification recommended by the World Health Organization. The paper presents a comparative assessment of the nomenclature and application of the ATC-vet classification in the Galen system, the WHO Model Lists of Essential Medicines, the Essential Medicines List for Medical Use, and the WSAVA List of Essential Medicines for Dogs and Cats.