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Self-medication: speak the truth

Self-medication using drugs hyped by advertising but whose efficacy is limited is not beneficial to patients.

Self-medication, the option for patients to buy medication without a doctor’s prescription, is hailed as a good thing in some quarters: it allows patients to take their health into their own hands, while reducing the deficit of the French national health insurance system. Patients will soon be able to buy some drugs over the counter in France.

Regrettably, in France, self-medication seems to mean drugs with limited efficacy, which are no longer reimbursed and are promoted thanks to persuasive, simplistic or even misleading advertising. The government and the pharmaceutical companies are effectively colluding for purely financial reasons to maintain high consumption of expensive drugs, often of limited efficacy, which are no longer reimbursed, even those with an unfavourable risk-benefit balance.

True patient autonomy requires reliable, independent information on diseases and the treatment options (not only drugs), and improved access to drugs whose efficacy is well established, like some analgesics or methods of contraception.

And as for the national health insurance deficit, much more is to be gained by tackling the very high costs of new drugs, starting with those that offer no new advantage.

©Prescrire March 2008

Source: "Automédication : dire la vérité" Rev Prescrire 2008; 28 (293): 217.

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