Access to medicines, Sept. 5 -- As cases of diabetes continue to rise in low- and middle-income countries, it's encouraging that another form of insulin-rapid-acting insulin analogues-and GLP-1 agonists have been added to the World Health Organization's (WHO) Model List of Essential Medicines (EML), said Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).

When a medicine is added to the WHO's EML, it signals that it is vital for public health and should be made affordable and accessible, that countries should include it in national policies, and that corporations should register it in-country so more people can access it. Currently, rapid-acting insulins and GLP-1s are generally unaffordable and often unavailable in the places MSF op...