These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: The rational use of drugs and WHO.
    Journal: Dev Dialogue; 1985; (2):1-4. PubMed ID: 12341043.
    Abstract:
    On November 25-29, 1985, the World Health Organization held a Conference in Nairobi of Experts on the Rational Use of Drugs. In the early 1980s, both the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (IFPMA) and Health Action International (HAI) had developed codes of pharmaceutical marketing practices in order to come to terms with the malpractices in this field. A more comprehensive approach was needed, however. Prime responsibility for rational drug use must rest with the member governments, operating through national regulatory authorities and assisted in their work by guidelines on minimum requirements for national drug regulation prepared by WHO. The Dag Hammarskjold Foundation organized a seminar on Another Development in Pharmaceuticals as an independent contribution to the international debate on this global issue. The seminar emphasized that development should be need-oriented, self-reliant, and based on structural transformations. Governments view the pharmaceutical crisis as 1 facet of the more general problem of spiralling health costs which put an intolerable burden on already overstretched welfare services. The pharmaceutical industry sees the crisis largely in terms of excessively restrictive regulations which stifle innovation of products. Some doctors and pharmacists feel that increased regulatory measures will erode their rights to prescribe and to control the supply and information to patients. On the other hand, some clinical pharmacologists and administrators express concern about excessive, irrational and uneconomic prescribing and its effects on public health. Consumer groups define the problem in terms of an overbearing and greedy business community. The general public fail to understand the effects of pharmaceuticals.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]