India’s National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) is stuck in 2022 while the WHO has updated its global benchmark twice. The Working Group on Access to Medicines and Treatments has written to the government demanding an urgent revision, noting that India’s list still contains 384 medicines while the WHO’s 2025 Model List has 523. The gap is not academic: the group identifies 17 active cancer-treating agents and four supportive cancer-care medicines on the...