[india-drug] E-drug: Petition EU Directive/la revue Prescrire

[Christophe Kopp<christophe.kopp@wanadoo.fr>]

[copied from E-drug. Thanks?????.SS]

E-drug: Petition EU Directive/la revue Prescrire
----------------------------------------------------------

Dear Colleague

A proposed Directive and Regulation on medicines will be submitted
shortly for adoption by the European Parliament and the Council of
Europe. A thorough review of these proposals can be found in European
Medicines Policy/Prescrire International, available on request.

If the proposals are adopted as they stand, they will lead to a number
of extremely worrying changes throughout the Europe Community:

- evaluation of marketing applications would be accelerated (not only
for patients urgently needing new treatments), and authorisation would
be granted once and for all, abandoning the current system of regular
re-appraisals;
- EMEA would maintain excessive secrecy in pharmacovigilance, hindering
rational management of drug-related problems;
- introduction of direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs
on the one hand, and lack of freedom of information on key scientific
data on the other, would increase irrational use of drugs.

Common sense dictates that the European medicines agency should be
linked to the EU Health and Consumer Protection Directorate-General of
the European Commission, rather than the Enterprise Directorate as at
present.
Also, being funded mainly by fees paid directly by drug companies, the
agency has a serious competing interest.

Faced with a deliberate policy to serve industry first, health
professionals and patients must act before it is too late. La revue
Prescrire has launched a petition campaign calling Members of European
Parliament and the President of the EU Parliament to oppose the
Commission's proposed revision.

The petition kit is available on request or on Health Action
International website (www.haiweb.org).  Please photocopy it and
distribute it as widely as possible.

Should you want to get European Medicines Policy/Prescrire
International
and our petition kit as PDF documents, feel free to ask me.

Christophe Kopp
Staff editor
La revue Prescrire
Member of Medicines in Europe Forum
christophe.kopp@wanadoo.fr




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