Public consultation: Guidelines for essential disease-modifying therapies for multiple sclerosis for low-resource settings |
Public consultation
There are 2.8 million people living with MS but many people do not have access to disease modifying therapies (DMTs). The DMTs may simply not be available or too expensive for the person with MS. In 7 out of 10 countries people face barriers in accessing treatment. There is an urgent need to make MS treatments available in all health systems.
To ensure an evidence-based approach for advocacy, MSIF convened an international multi-disciplinary panel, the MSIF Essential Medicines Panel (MEMP), which made recommendations on essential MS DMTs for low-resource settings. The Cochrane MS Group systematically retrieved and evaluated the evidence and the panel made judgments using the GRADE evidence-to-decision (EtD) framework, facilitated by the GRADE McMaster Centre. These MEMP recommendations were considered together with MSIF’s Off-Label Treatments (MOLT) guidelines to propose MS DMTs on the World Health Organization essential medicines list.
The recommendations are now open for public comment until 27th of January 2022: http://www.msif.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/MEMP_EtD-and-recommendations_public_201222.pdf
In addition, we have prepared
- A scope document explaining the purpose of the recommendations
- A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) document to give more context to the recommendations
Please note that due to the potential large number of comments, we are unable to provide individual replies. We will aim to consider all potential errors in the evidence reviews.
Background documents
The Cochrane systematic review protocols can be found here:
Relapsing forms of MS (RMS): Forthcoming updated version of https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD011381
Progressive forms of MS (PMS): https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD015443
Rapid systematic review protocol for acceptability, equity, feasibility, and values: https://osf.io/w9gs8/