Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15261

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Thomas V.
Drugs: prescription and promotion in third world countries
Calicut Medical Journal 2008 Jan-Mar; 6:(1):e1
http://calicutmedicaljournal.info/2008/1/e1.pdf

Abstract:

Practicing medicine is an art as well a science. The physician is expected to prescribe drugs for the ailments of the patients and the medicines are expected to give a reasonable cure. The medical practitioner has the freedom to decide the drugs required for their patient for any given ailment. However this freedom gets curtailed under certain situations. For example, if the practitioner works in a set up where there is only limited availability of medicines, the choice is limited to trying various permutations and combinations within the available list of drugs. This is more so in
government run hospitals and it is not an uncommon practice in such hospitals in India to give a part of the required medicines from its pharmacy and the remaining requirement is generally procured from the open market by the patients or their relatives. In Kerala, one of the most literate states in India, private practitioners of medicine cater to 60% of the need of health care for the community.

For many busy practitioners, the only source of information about new drugs is from promotional brochures brought out by pharmaceutical firms. Many techniques are used by the pharmaceutical firms, right from the flash cards to the very advanced and slide or video presentations. Often the brochures are presented in a very impressive manner so that the listener will get trapped unaware into believing what was told. However, in reality, the drug promotional information delivered to
practitioners is not often the “truth and nothing but truth.”…