Essential medicines are those medicines that satisfy the priority health care needs of the population. WHO published the first essential medicine list in 1977 and has been updating it every two years since.
Nepal being a signatory of the Alma Ata declaration (1978) implemented the essential medicine program with a first ever National List of Essential Medicines, NLEM in 1986.
Since then NLEM revised five times (1992, 1997, 2002, 2011 and 2016) with the support from WHO Nepal.
