[indices] Information about foreign drugs

["Clinica Tossicologia" <clintox@ospedaliriuniti.bergamo.it>]

BERGAMO POISON CONTROL CENTER
ITALY

  Bergamo, Italy, 18/05/07
  Dear Sirs,
It is a common experience of the Centres of documentation of the medicine 
and  of the Poison Control Centres to receive an increase of the requests 
of information on foreign drugs.
The most frequently scenario is represented by the foreign patient under 
pharmacological treatment who comes in Italy with his own medicines in 
insufficient quantitative to guarantee the therapy during all the stay, 
and often with only the blister without its original wrapping.
During the stay in Italy there can happen two situations:
a)      The patient exhausts the escorts of medicines and makes reference 
to a doctor or to a pharmacist asking him to 
prescribe the same medecine or an italian equivalent; when the patient 
misses the original wrapping it becomes impossible to discover the active 
principle because it is almost never reported on the blister;
b)      The patient has an acute sanitary problem and he is brought in 
emergency room: for the doctor it is very important to understand with 
what medicines the patient is in treatment.
As a consequence of increased stream of foreign people in Italy and to be 
able to guarantee to the sanitary operators the information that become 
more and more essential, we want to create a support for informing them 
about the bioequivalent form of drugs which are not available in Italy.
To achieve our goal, we would like to know how to get drug references 
(formularies, electronic or on paper) of East European Countries, African 
Countries, South American Countries and Asian Countries.

Looking forward to your reply, we thank you in advance for your kind 
cooperation.

Best Regards
Dott. Milena Carrara, Dott. Federica Lorenzi
Poison Control Centre
Bergamo, Italy



U.S. Tossicologia Clinica - Centro Antiveleni 
Azienda Ospedali Riuniti
L.go Barozzi, 1 - 24128 Bergamo

Tel urgenze: 118 o 800883300
Tel non urgenze: 035.269469 
Segreteria: 035.269460
e-mail: clintox@ospedaliriuniti.bergamo.it