[e-drug] Med-reps and irrational medicine use in sub-Saharan Africa(3)

["Dardane Arifaj-Blumi" <dardanearifaj@hotmail.com>]

Med-reps and irrational medicine use in sub-Saharan Africa(3)
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Dear e-drugers,

   It  is  understandable  that pharmaceutical producers have to create a
   market for their products and using drug reps is only one of the means
   that  their marketing departments beat the competitors. Like everybody
   else  profoundly  interested  in  promoting  the  appropriate  use  of
   medicines,  I  fully agree that drug reps are very successful in their
   mission;  they  reach prescribers better than anyone else and convince
   them to prescribe the medicine they promote regardless of the pros and
   cons  of the existing evidence. Drug reps have excellent communication
   skills  and  are well trained in using strategies that work best; they
   know  how to make doctors listen without irritating their professional
   dignity  (that  sometimes  borders  on arrogance); they dont just drop
   some  brochures and use words like you should but instead help doctors
   feel  important,  dedicate  time  to  each  of  them  individually and
   convince  them  that they are in some form of partnership and sometimes
   even more.

   Instead  of  continuing  to demonize drug reps, I think that we should
   also  be a bit more self-critical about our interventions. With all my
   respect  for  the  efforts  and  achievements that were made so far by
   various  governments, organizations and agencies in promoting rational
   drug use, as Olutayo mentioned, very often drug reps are the only ones
   that  keep  doctors  up-to-date  about  new  products in the market. I
   wonder  what  is  the  proportion  of  impartial  drug  information to
   marketing  drug information that is printed, successfully disseminated
   and  regularly  updated?  I  assume  there  is  a huge gap in favor of
   marketing information.

   If  we  want to change the precribers behavior, the lessons are there.
   Drug reps teach us some very good tips how to do that. Did we ever try
   to  promote  rational  drug use by adapting similar strategies as drug
   reps? It is obvious that it will require much more financial and human
   investment  but ultimately the benefits could be greater to any health
   system  in  containing  overall  costs  and  increasing the quality of
   health care if we sent our own reps to prescribers.

   Cordially,

   Dardane Arifaj
   MPH graduate student
   Boston University
   Email: dardane@bu.edu