WHO Prequalification¶
WHO Prequalification matters when you need global regulatory context for medicines used across procurement and access programs outside the U.S./EU-only lens. It is the right page for questions about whether a medicine appears in the WHO finished-pharmaceutical-products list and for comparing that status with other regional drug views.
In BioMCP, WHO Prequalification is a local-runtime source for drug name/alias lookups and regional regulatory sections rather than a live per-request API surface. BioMCP auto-downloads the finished-pharmaceutical-products CSV into BIOMCP_WHO_DIR or the default data directory on first use, supports --region who|all, lets structured --region who searches filter structured U.S. hits through WHO prequalification, and exposes biomcp who sync when you want a forced refresh.
What BioMCP exposes¶
| Command | What BioMCP gets from this source | Integration note |
|---|---|---|
search drug <name> --region who |
WHO-prequalified drug matches by name or alias | Uses the local WHO batch for WHO-only name/alias lookups |
search drug <name> --region all |
Combined U.S., EU, and WHO name/alias search | Adds WHO rows to the split all-region output |
search drug --indication <disease> --region who |
WHO-prequalified rows filtered from structured U.S. search hits | Keeps MyChem structured semantics and narrows results through the WHO batch |
get drug <name> regulatory --region who|all |
WHO or combined regulatory context | WHO-backed regional regulatory section |
Example commands¶
Returns WHO-prequalified trastuzumab rows from the local WHO dataset.
Filters structured U.S. malaria hits through the local WHO prequalification batch.
Returns WHO-backed regulatory context for the WHO region.
Returns the truthful WHO empty state when the drug is not WHO-prequalified.
Refreshes the local WHO batch without waiting for the next automatic sync.
API access¶
No BioMCP API key required. BioMCP auto-downloads the WHO finished-pharmaceutical-products CSV into BIOMCP_WHO_DIR or the default data directory on first use.
Official source¶
WHO Prequalification is the official WHO CSV export behind BioMCP's WHO drug context.