Abstract
Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is one of crucial functions in the national drug policy. Performance
indicators ensure that priority actions are successfully implemented and produce desirable outcomes.
Performance indicators should have clarity, usefulness, measurability, reliability, and validity as well as
gain acceptance by key stakeholders. It is observed that international M&E frameworks and those existed
in Thailand applied common concepts and gave priority to similar components of drug systems. In Thailand,
the Thai Drug Watch has once developed 7-dimension drug systems indicators, namely governance,
self-reliance, safety, equity, drug quality, accessibility and affordability, and rational use, and analyzed
the situation in 2009. Nonetheless, they have not been routinely monitored ever since. Hence, definitive
and widely agreed indicators are still lacking apart from the Sustainable Development Goal indicator 3.b,
which supports the research and development of vaccines and medicines for the communicable and
non-communicable diseases that primarily affect developing countries and provides access to affordable
essential medicines and vaccines for all. SDG 3.b.3 monitors the proportion of health facilities that have
a core set of relevant essential medicines available and affordable on a sustainable basis. The indicators
developed and prioritized by the World Health Organization have potentials to be adapted to the
Thailand drug system contexts. The National Drug Policy group of the Food and Drug Administration has
institutional responsibility to develop and monitor the drug system performance; for which information
systems play an important supporting role.
