The World Health Organization (WHO) has added a new set of drugs for obesity and diabetes to its essential medicines list, alongside treatments for cancer and cystic fibrosis.

Cheap generic versions of the glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) drugs should also be made available for people in developing countries, the United Nations agency said in a statement on Friday.

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The list, consisting of 523 medicines for adults and 374 for children, is a catalogue of the drugs the WHO believes should be available in all functioning health systems.

“The new editions of essential medicines lists mark a significant step toward expanding access to new medicines with proven clinical benefits and with high potential for global public health impact,” said Yukiko Nakatani, WHO’s assistant director-general for Health Systems, Access and Data.

The expert committee added the active ingredients in Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro to the list, to treat type 2 diabetes in conjunction with established cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease or obesity.

The medicines were initially developed for diabetes, and have become wildly popular as weight-loss drugs, too, under different brand names. But the WHO stopped short of adding them to treat obesity alone, as it also did in 2023.

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The committee said this decision provided clear guidance on which patients would most benefit from the therapies.

“High prices of medicines like semaglutide and tirzepatide are limiting access to these medicines,” the WHO statement added, saying that encouraging generic drugmakers to produce the product would also help when patents begin to expire on the drugs next year.

Other additions

According to the WHO, more than 800 million people around the world were living with diabetes in 2022, while more than one billion people are affected by obesity.

Earlier this year, the organisation announced plans to recommend the use of medications for obesity, which is separate from their inclusion on the essential medicines list.

WHO data shows that, in 2021, more than 3.7 million people died from conditions linked to being overweight or obese – a number that exceeds the combined deaths from malaria, tuberculosis and HIV.

The list also includes Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ combination therapy for cystic fibrosis, Trikafta or Kaftrio. Activists have criticised its high price and lack of accessibility for years.

WHO’s list also includes Merck’s top-selling cancer immunotherapy drug, Keytruda, for the treatment of cervical cancers, colorectal cancers, and non-small cell lung cancers that have spread, or metastasised. The agency also recommended strategies to increase access to this drug.

The WHO further added rapid-acting insulin analogues, also made by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, among others, to the list for treating type 1, type 2 and gestational diabetes.