E-DRUG: the Global Village and essential drugs (8)
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Wilbert,
I would say that anything about drugs should not only include the drug
itself and information on it but something about its means of delivery.
You say that drugs as chemical products are reasonably controlled, and yet
the counterfeit market is booming as never before, especially for the high
priced drugs which can actually be counterfeited easily, how long before
counterfeit Viagra hits the market?
The attention given to how drugs are administered is at least as important
as the drugs themselves especially for injectables. The 'Global Village'is
rapidly becoming swamped by disposable syringes used often totally
inappropriately in counrties which cannot afford them. The subject of
injection safety does not seem to attract the same interest as discussions
on the merits or otherwise of the drugs themselves, and yet the dirty
injection is one of the most efficient ways of transmitting disease.
The Global Village probably has around 130 billion parenteral procedures a
year. Approximately 25 billion disposables are sold annually according to
WHO and WHO estimate that between 15% and 50% of disposables are used more
than once. I would say from my experience that the average figure is
towards the upper end of that bracket. Yet safety of injections does not
feature highly in the discussions on E-Drug, Why? Is it because unlike
banishing disease where we are the good guys and the viruses and bacteria
are the bad guys, where dirty injections are concerned we are the bad guys.
Dirty injections are a procedural failure on the part of heath services,
nobody wants to admit that their health service is instrumental in
spreading disease. In the US alone it is estimated that 800,000 health
care workers are injured each year from needle stick. If that is typical
of the rest of the world then we have nearly 200 million health workers a
year suffering injury and the attendent risk of infection. Then there are
the patients, how many of them are infected annually? We do not know. We
should know, until we accept that as health workers dirty injections are
our fault and that we all have a Duty of Care to prevent dirty injections
this hidden menace will continue.
Please include in Global Village the importance of taking effective action
for safe injections, at least by emphasising the development of non
parenteral drugs.
Anthony Battersby
FBA Health Systems Analysts
Email: FBA@compuserve.com
[Notes from the moderator: Good argument/data to cover the use of
injections in the upcoming article. Wilbert, how about circulating a
draft of your article for comments to all those who are interested in the
subject?
Safety of injections is indeed an important subject and we do
welcome articles/notes on this subject for E-DRUG.
Meanwhile, the technical problem with E-DRUG has been
fixed so please send your postings to the E-DRUG address
(e-drug@usa.healthnet.org) as before. Thanks. Syed Rizwanuddin Ahmad]
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