Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19895

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

Round the World: Malaysia: Call For Reform of Drug Policies
The Lancet 1983 Dec 17; 1412

Abstract:

Non-governmental organisations from South and South-East Asia, meeting last month in Penang, issued a 10-point declaration calling for “Health Now” rather than by the year 2000. The Penang declaration on rational health policies focused on the need for change in the manufacture, marketing, distribution, and use of pharmaceutical products. It called for the introduction of limited lists of essential drugs in both government and private healthcare systems; the introduction of tighter drug registration procedures, including legislation to prevent the dumping of hazardous, useless, or substandard drugs; stricter controls on pricing; strengthened research efforts in the use and production of traditional medicines; and an emphasis on generic, rather than brand, names on all product literature and labels.

The need for strong measures was emphasised by several speakers at the meeting, which was organised by the International Organisation of Consumers Unions (IOCU) and the Quaker International Affairs Programme (QIAP). Dr Claudio Sepulvda, coordinator of the programme on health and development of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), examined in detail the structure and activities of the transnational corporations. “The health problems of our countries are not solvable by pharmaceuticals”, he concluded: “the claim of the pharmaceutical industry to be working for the health of people is just not true. They have substituted the search for health with the search for wealth”.

Prof Musa Mohamad, Vice-Chancellor of the Universiti Sains Malaysia (Science University of Malaysia), who is a pharmacist, expressed concern over the proliferation of drugs. Many of them were said to be marketed not because of their benefit to the health of the population, but merely because they could not be sold. Dr T. Devaraj, president of the Malaysia Medical Association, called for a change in the present ways in which drugs were imported, manufactured, priced, distribution, sold, and used – as part of an overall change in health policies.