E-drug: Drug information service
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[As problems of access to independent drug information is coming up
regularly, I added a couple of recent e-drug messages on the subject
below Fionnuala's messages. In the e-drug archives there are many
more. Really worthwhile to dig around in the archives now and then...
HH]
I am a VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) pharmacist from Ireland
who is working with NWPSFH (North West Province Special Fund for
Health) which acts as the Essential Drugs Programme for the North
West Province of Cameroon.
One of my roles has been to introduce a Drug Information Service to
enhance rational use of essential drugs. We have gathered some
basic texts such as Martindale and BNF, but would appreciate advice
on how to procure additional references, preferably at as low a cost
as possible. Requests to drug companies have not been very
productive. We do not have our own internet access, but I do
download whatever I can from a local internet cafe.
I would welcome suggestions from other health care professionals on
how to implement and gain acceptance of such a service (many
prescribers I have approached mainly ask why a particular drug is out
of stock).
Fionnuala Mc Cullagh
VSO Pharmacist
NWPSFH-Bamenda
Cameroon
e-mail: fionnualamccullagh@hotmail.com
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DATE: 2/25/2003 11:20 AM
E-drug: WHO and training
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Dear E-druggers,
WHO is an international agency that is accountable to it's member
states and with a limited budget. Therefore, WHO has to prioritise
what it does and the member states have to agree to what it does. As
a consequence, it may seem that WHO works with ministries of
health to the exclusion of other agencies such as non-governmental
organisations or universities. Nevertheless WHO does undertake
much work with universities and non-governmental organisations as
well as with ministries of health. Although WHO does not generally
write textbooks for students much of the work is of direct benefit to
students and others who wish to improve the health of populations.
Examples are as follows and relate mainly to the field of drugs
(although of course there are many other examples):
(1) Many documents are available on WHO's website,
http://www.who.int/medicines , and perhaps many university teachers
are not aware of how much is there.
(2) Although many textbooks already exist, in many countries there is
a problem of access to them. WHO is working towards this through
the Health internetwork Access to Research initiative where 2,200
journals are provided either free or at reduced rates on-line to 112
poor countries. Details of this may be found through the WHO
website: http://www.who.int
(3) WHO does organise a number of training courses on various
aspects of rational use of medicines, details of which are posted on
the WHO website: http://www.who.int/medicines
(4) WHO has produced the Guide to Good Prescribing aimed
specifically at medical undergraduates and does organise
international courses on problem-based pharmacotherapy every year
in collaboration with various partners - see the website for details.
(5) The different departments of WHO produce clinical guidelines for
the diseases that they work on. The department of Essential Drugs
and Medicines Policy is working towards the development of a
web-based medicines library where the WHO model essential drug
list, the model formulary and summaries of all the clinical guidelines
produced by WHO will be available on the WHO medicines website
(as detailed above) together with the supporting evidence and links to
the full clinical guidelines. It is hoped that this will be a tremendous
resource for member states and all health professionals when it is
finished.
Finally, we in WHO are well aware that we could be doing more and
are always open to suggestions about how we might do better given
the various constraints under which we work.
Dr. Kathleen Holloway
Medical Officer for Policy, Access and Rational Use,
Department of Essential Drugs and Medicines Policy,
World Health Organisation, 20 Avenue Appia, Gen�ve, CH-1211
Tel: +41 22 791 2336; Fax: +41 22 791 4167
email: hollowayk@who.int
DATE: 2/10/2003 5:38 PM
RE: [e-drug] Donating books and journals to less developed
countries
E-drug: Donating books and journals to less developed countries
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BMJ 2003;326:298 ( 8 February )
Donating books and journals to less developed countries The
BMA/BMJ information fund welcomes applications from institutions
Both the BMA and the BMJ receive many requests for free medical
books and journals from doctors and librarians in less developed
countries and other areas of need. Until recently we have had no
specific funding to meet these requests, and have arranged
donations of secondhand journals and surplus BMJ books somewhat
haphazardly. Since 2000, however, the BMA and BMJ have set aside
�30 000 ($47 000; 47 000) a year, from the profits of the BMJ
Publishing Group, to help institutions to choose the right health
information for their users (see BMA/BMJ information fund's activity
report for 2000-2 on bmj.com).
The BMA/BMJ information fund does not give money but donates and
sends educational materials. And because we want our donations to
help as many people as possible we consider applications only from
institutions rather than from individual doctors and other health
workers. We ask applicants to tell us about their organisations: what
they do, what other support they receive, and exactly what materials
they need. In this way we can ensure, as far as possible, that the
information is relevant and of high quality. The fund can provide
books, journals, and CD Roms from the BMJ Publishing Group at
very low cost, but it can also donate other publishers' material at
discounted prices, bought through the BMJ Bookshop.
The fund does not have a distribution network. We arrange and pay
for postage of consignments and always ask applicants for advice on
the best way to send them. In this way we have provided books
requested by medical centres and libraries in Afghanistan, Sierra
Leone, Gambia, Somaliland, Uganda, Nigeria, Iraq, Bangladesh,
India, and Nepal. But we realised early on that supporting existing
distributors would be a good way to use at least part of the money.
That's why we have worked closely with a British charity, Book Aid
International. Book Aid has already distributed across sub-Saharan
Africa 3500 copies of the newly revised ABC of AIDS, which the fund
paid for as a special print run.(1) A similar scheme is now under way
for the new BMJ book International Child Health. In addition, the fund
has allowed Book Aid to come to the BMJ warehouse and choose a
variety of books to send to their extensive network of needy
organisations.
Although the information fund is primarily for organisations in poorer
countries, we have also donated requested books to two centres in
the United Kingdom. Both help refugee doctors prepare for the United
Kingdom's Professional and Linguistic Assessment Board (PLAB)
test, a cause that the fund is happy to support.
We haven't been able to say yes to everyone. We couldn't fund some
applications, either because we were unable to gather sufficient
information about the institutions concerned or because the projects
they described were too far removed from our terms of reference. We
have also turned down requests from individuals, although we have
directed them to a scheme that matches them with BMJ readers who
want to donate their used journals and books directly.(2)
The BMA/BMJ information fund is one of several initiatives to plug the
information gap between rich and poor countries. The BMJ and
studentBMJ are freely available on the web to everybody worldwide.
And more than 100 of the world's poorest countries now have free
web access to the electronic versions of the BMJ Publishing Group's
23 specialist journals and its evidence based compendium Clinical
Evidence.(3) Many other publishers offer similar web access to well
over 1000 of the world's best biomedical journals, either directly or
through schemes such as FreeMedicalJournals.com
(www.freemedicaljournals.com) and the Health InterNetwork: Access
to Research Initiative (HINARI).(4)
These schemes will be of limited usefulness, however, if the
information they provide isn't relevant to the people who need to use
it in their learning and practice. (5,6) The BMA/BMJ information fund
is trying to get round this by donating exactly what people tell us they
want. If you would like to apply to the fund on behalf of a medical
school, library, hospital, health centre, or medical association in an
area of great need, please email us a detailed request, using the
application form on bmj.com.
Trish Groves, assistant editor.
BMJ, (tgroves@bmj.com)
Sallie Nicholas, head, International Department, BMA.
John Hudson, publisher.
1. Book Aid International. Annual review 2001-2002.
www.bookaid.org/resources/downloads/ar.pdf (accessed 6 Nov
2002).
2. Minerva. BMJ 2001; 322: 1498[Free Full Text].
3. Smith R, Williamson A. BMJ journals free to the developing world.
BMJ , 2002:324:380.
4. Health InterNetwork. Health InterNetwork Access to Research
Inititative. www.healthinternetwork.org (accessed 6 Nov 2002).
5. Vass A. Medical journals can reduce global health inequality,
conference told. BMJ 2002; 324: 444[Free Full Text].
6. Shaywitz DA, Ausiello DA. The 15% solution for majority health
concerns. Nature webdebates.
www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/Articles/health.html
(accessed 6 Nov 2002).
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