WHO’s 2025 Essential Medicines Lists (EML), published Friday, has included the active ingredients in popular weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy – semaglutide or other comparable GLP-1 receptor agonists – in a recommendation that recognizes the growing importance of the drugs in clinical treatment of diabetes worldwide.
These drugs, as well as new PD-1/PD-L1 cancer therapies, notably pembrolizumab and two other therapeutic alternatives, were also among the 20 new medicines added to the 2025 WHO EML.
The EML also includes rapid acting insulin analogues to the list for the first time. Longer-acting synthetic insulin formulas were first included in the list in 2021, as an alternative to human-derived insulin products.
Another 15 drugs were added to a separate Essential Medicines List for children (EMLc) in this year’s listing, which is published every two years. The new list includes new drugs for cystic fibrosis and haemophilia, as well as recently approved vaccines for malaria and mpox. Also on Friday, WHO removed its declaration of an mpox Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), noting that cases in Africa, which had been most affected by the recent emergency, had stabilized.
The EML lists are used by over 150 countries, as well as insurance and health care providers, to guide decisions about procurement and provision of critical medicines for virtually every infectious and non-communicable disease condition.
The 24th edition of the EML includes about critical medicines for 563 drugs, on the adult list, and 361 treatments on the children’s listing.
