Author: Lynne Taylor

The National Health Service in Wales could save more than £2 million this year through use of a real-time prescribing support tool which produced savings totaling £1,022,351 in 2007 for 19 of the 22 Local Health Boards (LHBs) in Wales which are currently using it, it is forecast.

Calls are growing for the government to change the rules which permit National Health Service care to be withdrawn for patients who chose to pay privately for “top-up” medicines.

The Japanese government bears ultimate responsibility for the defective blood products which are claimed to have caused as many as 10,000 people to become infected with hepatitis C, the country’s premier has acknowledged. “Pharmaceutical matters are the responsibility of the authority that grants permissions for them,” said Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda. “In that sense, I believe the government bears responsibility in various ways, including moral responsibility,” he added.

Sri Lanka’s Healthcare and Nutrition Ministry has announced that pharmaceutical sales representatives will no longer be allowed to enter government health institutions during clinic hours. Also, all prescriptions issued both government and private hospitals must now be written generically; the use of brand names is prohibited, in a move which government sources say is aimed at achieving significant reductions in the costs of essential, effective and safe drugs.

2008 could see the beginnings of an increased role for the pharmaceutical industry in providing medicines information to patients and consumers in the European Union, following the publication of the European Commission’s long-awaited Report on Current Practice With Regard to Provision of Information to Patients on Medicinal Products.