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Pharmaceutical companies' compliance aid programmes: no to trickery

Companies are trying to get a new form of advertising legalised in France, on the sly.

The 2004 EU Medicines Directive reinforced the ban on advertising prescription drugs to the general public in Europe. But pharmaceutical companies will not admit defeat.

The pharmaceutical industry estimates lost sales of 30 billion dollars a year worldwide as a result of patients not following their treatment through to the end. Manufacturers also reckon that in general it costs six times less to keep a customer than to win a new one. And so they intend to set up so-called "compliance aid programmes" to remind patients to take their medicine.

It is up to family doctors and pharmacists to help patients keep to their treatment; secondly, patients may have good reason to halt their treatment.

The 2004 Directive prohibits advertising prescription drugs to the general public, and makes no mention of "compliance aid programmes". How is it then that these programmes are being introduced into the draft proposal for a decree transposing this Directive into French law? If the decree is passed in its current form, pharmaceutical companies will be authorised, with the prior agreement of the doctor and the patient, to telephone patients to check whether they have taken all their medicine, or even to send a community nurse to their home to ensure that they do so. Politicians and citizens alike should oppose this offensive action.

©Prescrire May 2006

Source: "Programme des firmes pharmaceutiques d'"aide à l'observance" : l'imposture" Rev Prescrire 2006 ; 26 (271) : 300.

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