Houston We Have A Problem
Houston, did I say Houston? Well, I meant Health Canada. Yes: Health Canada, we have a problem. Seems that protecting sources in the observation of federal privacy legislation, runs counter to the best interests of attempting to come to grips with a most severe societal problem. Health Canada: are you listening? Start assisting, and stop thwarting attempts by other agencies to do-the-right-thing.
Canada presents as one of the world's highest users of legal opioids (drugs derived from opium poppies for the treatment of pain). It's not what comes readily to mind, that Canadians are wimps and complain about unsustainable levels of pain from all manner of concerning illnesses and post-operative recoveries. Though that might seem a reasonable assumption.
No, it's because a whole lot of those opiate-prescription drugs end up being over-prescribed, and out on the streets, for sale. Horrors. But it's true. Canadians are such sneakily-illicit entrepreneurs. They will visit a number of doctors and from each obtain a prescription which they badly need to ease their insufferable pain.
(The really miserable thing about this is that there are so many people who do indeed suffer dreadful pain. They're not the miscreants, however, who go about from physician to physician, pharmacy to pharmacy, stocking up on the opiates.)
It's the people who have an addiction to feed. It's the people who have a business they'd like to continue thriving; supplying those addicts with the drugs they need to get their highs that so much improve the quality of their miserable lives. A national study conducted and published in 2008 reached the conclusion that prescription medications had surpassed heroin as the opioid of choice on the street.
A rising number of deaths are being linked to oxycodone, the active ingredient in slow-release OxyContin tablets. "This is a huge public-health issue. It's exploding, but we're only just slowly wrapping our heads around the extent of this and what it all means ... We need a huge intervention strategy", warns Benedikt Fischer, professor at Simon Fraser University.
Right. Which is why regulators like Don Rowe, registrar of the Newfoundland Labrador Pharmacy Board is so fed up with Health Canada. "It's an utter frustration. It's pretty frustrating when you can't get information from the national body that has that information. There's times where we wonder. 'Do they really care what's happening here?'"
Health Canada claims their hands are tied, they cannot reveal to the regulators the information they require. Which would inform them how much of a particular drug a manufacturer makes available to a particular pharmacy. Sales figures can then be balanced against current stock. There is evidence that drugs are being stolen, lost, purloined by employees; simply diverted from within the supply chain.
A pharmacist in St.John's recently pleaded guilty of illegally peddling oxycodone and other prescription drugs. Theft or loss of at least 28-million doses of various opioid painkillers had been reported to the U.S. government over a four-year period, 89% of it traced as 'missing' from pharmacies. "We know there is a big problem out there but we need to better understand it in order to effectively address it", explained the registrar of the Alberta College of Pharmacy.
"It seems inappropriate that we all have a regulatory responsibility within different parts of the system, but those different parts aren't communicating effectively with one another." The data on sales from wholesalers to pharmacies are clearly the clue to what's occurring. Gaps between the numbers of drugs dispensed by pharmacies and their inventory would reveal much.
Health Canada could ease the logjam in investigatory procedures by handing over sales information. What's needed is a re-interpretation of the federal privacy legislation hampering the issuance of the data. What's more, society is being held to ransom by a too-rigid reading of that very legislation.
Hello there, you listening?
Canada presents as one of the world's highest users of legal opioids (drugs derived from opium poppies for the treatment of pain). It's not what comes readily to mind, that Canadians are wimps and complain about unsustainable levels of pain from all manner of concerning illnesses and post-operative recoveries. Though that might seem a reasonable assumption.
No, it's because a whole lot of those opiate-prescription drugs end up being over-prescribed, and out on the streets, for sale. Horrors. But it's true. Canadians are such sneakily-illicit entrepreneurs. They will visit a number of doctors and from each obtain a prescription which they badly need to ease their insufferable pain.
(The really miserable thing about this is that there are so many people who do indeed suffer dreadful pain. They're not the miscreants, however, who go about from physician to physician, pharmacy to pharmacy, stocking up on the opiates.)
It's the people who have an addiction to feed. It's the people who have a business they'd like to continue thriving; supplying those addicts with the drugs they need to get their highs that so much improve the quality of their miserable lives. A national study conducted and published in 2008 reached the conclusion that prescription medications had surpassed heroin as the opioid of choice on the street.
A rising number of deaths are being linked to oxycodone, the active ingredient in slow-release OxyContin tablets. "This is a huge public-health issue. It's exploding, but we're only just slowly wrapping our heads around the extent of this and what it all means ... We need a huge intervention strategy", warns Benedikt Fischer, professor at Simon Fraser University.
Right. Which is why regulators like Don Rowe, registrar of the Newfoundland Labrador Pharmacy Board is so fed up with Health Canada. "It's an utter frustration. It's pretty frustrating when you can't get information from the national body that has that information. There's times where we wonder. 'Do they really care what's happening here?'"
Health Canada claims their hands are tied, they cannot reveal to the regulators the information they require. Which would inform them how much of a particular drug a manufacturer makes available to a particular pharmacy. Sales figures can then be balanced against current stock. There is evidence that drugs are being stolen, lost, purloined by employees; simply diverted from within the supply chain.
A pharmacist in St.John's recently pleaded guilty of illegally peddling oxycodone and other prescription drugs. Theft or loss of at least 28-million doses of various opioid painkillers had been reported to the U.S. government over a four-year period, 89% of it traced as 'missing' from pharmacies. "We know there is a big problem out there but we need to better understand it in order to effectively address it", explained the registrar of the Alberta College of Pharmacy.
"It seems inappropriate that we all have a regulatory responsibility within different parts of the system, but those different parts aren't communicating effectively with one another." The data on sales from wholesalers to pharmacies are clearly the clue to what's occurring. Gaps between the numbers of drugs dispensed by pharmacies and their inventory would reveal much.
Health Canada could ease the logjam in investigatory procedures by handing over sales information. What's needed is a re-interpretation of the federal privacy legislation hampering the issuance of the data. What's more, society is being held to ransom by a too-rigid reading of that very legislation.
Hello there, you listening?
Labels: Government of Canada, Health, Human Fallibility
posted by Pieface | 7:11 PM
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