E-DRUG: Make medicines child size campaign (8)
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At the press conference, Save the Children experessed general support for
the campaign: this is clearly necessary but it is by no means sufficient.
We point to three priorites for additional actions to make the potential
benefit of this a reality for billions of children around the world.
¡P There is a need for routine cross registration, so that drugs
approved in recognized markets are routine registered for use in less well
established markets;
¡P The is a need to strengthen health systems, particularly supply
management and logistics, so that drugs can get from the ports and capital
cities to the communities where children need them, and;
¡P There is a need to take account of the context in which these
preparations are actually used. This includes heat stabilization,
packaging, and product inserts and instructions. In much of the world¡Xand
this is particularly true in rural Africa and Asia where there is the
greatest need--primary care is not routine provided by doctors and nurses;
its provided by auxiliary health staff or by mothers themselves, who so
often have limited literacy or are pre-literate due to social barriers to
education.
Jeffrey W. Mecaskey, Head of Health
Save the Children UK
Mobile: +44 7917 550 253
e-mail: j.mecaskey@savethechildren.org.uk
E-DRUG: Make medicines child size campaign (10)
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I'd like to share experiences related to inavailability of Child size
medications.
Cost is the biggest issue we face when a child requires 1 ml of a 100 ml of
parentral Metronidazole, ciprofloxacin, Amphotericin and the likes.
I have seen parents pay 34,000 rupees (around 500US $) for a vial of
Survanta [beractant] of which they require only 1/4 of the medicine and waste the rest (no safe and re-use data).
We see our selves struggle with anesthetics like Propofol and Ketamine again
coming in adult dosage and quantity. It's really time some work was done on this front, especailly considering the third world, already burdened by impoverishment and disease .
Either this, or some practical work be done on stability of these medications if drawn and preserved in syringes for multiple use purpose, or better still, work be done by the manufacturers for multi dose, long stability prepartions.
Ozma Fazal Khan
Staff Pharmacist/Training Coordinator
The Aga Khan Hospital (Pharmacy)
Karachi, Pakistan.
"ozma fazal" <ozma.fazal@gmail.com>
E-DRUG: Make medicines child size campaign (11)
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On your first point: routine cross registration (or reference registration)
is an interesting idea. A group here at BU is looking at this and will be
developing legislative language for a group of developing countries.
Kevin Outterson
Boston University School of Law
765 Commonwealth Ave., Boston MA 02215
617 353 3103
http://ssrn.com/author=340746
mko <mko@bu.edu>