E-drug: Essential diagnostics programme
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Dear e-druggers,
Rational use of drugs heavily depends on a correct diagnosis. Policy
issues like the quality of diagnosis and the choice and maintenance of
often expensive diagnostic equipment have received relatively little
attention as argued by Paul Garner, Liverpool School of Tropical
Medicine (also on e-drug) in 1997. The development of an "essential
diagnostics programme" along the lines of the essential drugs
programme was proposed.
The biomedical research department in the Royal Tropical Institute,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands is now preparing a study, describing the
current practice in the field of the use of diagnostics and possible
determinants in a number of low income countries. It aims at
developing a management tool to monitor and improve the use of
diagnostics.
Besides describing the current practice it will look at cultural
anthropological aspects of biomedical diagnostics in local settings.
The third component of the study will look at the health economics
aspect of household expenditure (formal and informal) on biomedical
diagnostics.
We would like to learn from any experiences or plans e-druggers are
involved in or know of as there is not much published on this area and
we would like to link up with other initiatives. Please let us know.
Thomas van der Heijden
thomas.vdh@inter.nl.net
and
Paul Klatser
p.klatser@kit.nl
Royal Tropical Institute/ biomedical research
Meibergdreef 39
1105 AZ Amsterdam
The Netherlands
ph +31 20 5665 441
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