Memorandum submitted by W A Smith
I wish to draw attention to a problem which
must affect many thousands of NHS patients throughout the country.
I enclose a draft leaflet which we are developing to draw attention
to a problem which must affect many thousands of NHS patients
throughout the country. [8]
Ultimately the Health Service is there to maintain
and improve the well-being of patients, and the present system
of supplying medicines to patients causes much difficulty for
those patients who need to take many tablets every day. Thus,
effectiveness is reduced, and NHS funds are misused.
The essential problem is that a patient prescribed
a generic medicine cannot rely on receiving the same brand every
time, so that the tablets, the foil strips, and the packet can
all look quite different for the same medicine. In addition, the
brands all have different names so that a patient cannot always
be sure that he is getting the same medicine, and it is very easy
to get tablets mixed up.
This clearly impedes the effectiveness of the
medicines, causing inadvertent underdosing or overdosing, however
careful the patient is, and may also indeed cause hazard.
Of course, there is no problem for a patient
who needs to take only a single medicine for a short period.
This is a serious problem which is little recognised
by politicians, administrators, and health professionals, perhaps
partly because it is seen to be too difficult and complex to tackle.
The problem relates to competition policy within this country
and throughout the EEC, where patients in other countries may
have more choice of brand of medicine.
The problems are greater with items manufactured
in other countries of the EEC, and in many cases even the same
brand appears quite different if manufactured abroad. Often the
label in English pasted on obscures other important information
in another language.
One approach might be to find ways of achieving
a uniform appearance in all respects for all brands of a single
general medicine, with the generic name larger and more prominent
than the brand name. This could be difficult, but should not be
shirked as it would solve the problem, no doubt other solutions
could also be found.
I believe that patients should be informed of
the NHS cost of their medicines and it could be helpful if the
price was printed on the pharmacist's label.
Incidentally, why is it cheaper to produce medicines
in other parts of the EEC than here, and who eventually gets the
profit from doing this?
7 June 2007
8 Leaflet not printed. Back
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