Shin Young-soo, the World Health Organization’s regional director for the Western Pacific, said he is proud of his home country’s successful separation of drug prescribing and dispensing.

He said Korea should take the credit for dividing the two, which many countries in the Western Pacific region are not able to do for political reasons.

The nation separated the drug prescribing and dispensing in 2000.

Shin Young-soo, the World Health Organization’s regional director for the Western Pacific, sends a video message at the conference by the Korean Academy of Health Policy and Management.

His comments came at a video message played at a conference by the Korean Academy of Health Policy and Management on Friday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the society. The conference’s theme was “Retrospect and prospect of 30 years of the health policy and management.”

“It seems that there is less room for scholars to be involved in healthcare policies. Decision-making for healthcare policies is becoming a tug-of-war among stakeholders for their political ideologies, rather than a place for academic concepts,” Shin said. Despite difficult circumstances, scholars are still assigned with a variety of tasks, he noted.

“The public health sector is the nation's top concern. Therefore, researchers still have a lot of work to do,” he said. “They include satisfying the public’s needs of medical services, comparing the benefits from medical care, and analyzing big data on people’s burden to fight diseases.”

Korea will have to assess how the current medical system is suitable for the future and come up with a new healthcare system to maximize the benefit of public health, Shin noted.

According to Shin, the WHO is developing a roadmap for each country’s development of the healthcare system.

“For this, we are meeting with healthcare ministry officials, prime ministers, and lawmakers. The issue of the healthcare system is continuously raised whether it is in developing or advanced countries,” he said.

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