National nomenclature

Medicinal product purchase intended for public sale in private pharmacies is done according to a national nomenclature including 1,800 medicinal products cunong which is a fundamental or strategic list of 200 medicinal products corresponding to 133 INN (XXIV Congres Medical Maghrebin 1995). 

At this period many national nomenclature committees were at work in different countries. The commission felt that above all its role should be further centralization and coordination of the first work done—it could make proposals only when suggestions had been submitted to it and it could make decisions after submitting its projects for examination to the different national bodies affiliated with the Union (6). 

Since then, the activities of national nomenclature commissions have been coordinated in order to achieve international standardization in nomenclature under the auspices of WHO according to article 2a and 2u of its constimtion ... 

National nomenclature commissions select and publish the following national nonproprietary names (address of responsible authority given in brackets) ... 

Since the INN program came into existence, WHO has coordinated the activities of national nomenclature commissions. Several INN experts are secretaries to national nomenclature commissions and in most cases the WHO secretariat also acts as corresponding member of these commissions. Differences between national and international nomenclature have become rare. 

In most countries national nomenclature commissions are part of or closely linked to the national pharmacopoeia. Some countries no longer have a commission and publish the INNs directly as national names in their legal publications, for example, in Germany and the Nordic countries the latter published previously Nordic Pharmacopoeia Names (NFN). hi others, the national nomenclature commission adopts INNs in the language of the country as national names. 

When WHO s programme first started, the experts had to coordinate the activities of existing national nomenclature programmes, which were especially active in France, the Nordic countries, the UK and the USA. As a result of the national programmes activities, many substances already... 

The International Standardization Organization (ISO), primarily throngh its Technical Committee TC/61 Plastics, and various national nomenclature bodies (such as that of the American Chemical Society) are also helping to shape the field. 

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