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Essential medicines, as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), are the medicines that “satisfy the priority health care needs of the population”.[1] Essential medicines are the medications that people should have access to at all times in sufficient amounts. These medications should be generally affordable.[2] Since 1977, the WHO has published a model list of essential medicines, with the current (2019) list for adult patients containing over 400 medicines.[3] But there is now a new current list from 2021 of the essential medicine list for adults and children’s by the WHO.[4] But since the 2021 list came out there has been some changes that have been implemented including what the medication cost should not be the grounds for exclusion criteria if it meets other selection criteria and secondly, cost effectiveness differences should be within therapeutic areas. As the next year antiretroviral agents were included in the list of essential medicines.[5] Since 2007, a separate list of medicines intended for child patients has been published.[6] Both the WHO adult and children’s lists contain a notation indicating that a particular medication is “complementary”, thus essentially there are two lists, the “core list” and the “complementary list”. The core list presents a list of minimum medicine needs for a basic health care system, listing the most efficacious, safe and cost-effective medicines for priority conditions. Priority conditions are selected on the basis of current and estimated future public health relevance, and potential for safe and cost-effective treatment.