BMJ  2003;327:863-864 (11 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7419.863

Education and debate

Perspectives from the pharmaceutical industry

¹ Merck & Co, One Merck Drive, Whitehouse Station, NJ 08889-0100 USA

What information do patients need about medicines? Partnership between health professionals and patients depends, in part, on the provision and exchange of accurate and reliable information about drugs, but who should provide it? We invited contributors to answer the question from the perspectives of patients, clinicians, and the pharmaceutical industry

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

"Drugs don't work in patients who don't take them." This famous observation by C Everett Koop, former US surgeon general, is reinforced by the findings of a recent World Health Organization report on adherence to long term treatments. On average, half of the patients prescribed drugs for chronic conditions (such as hypertension, hypercholesterolaemia, and diabetes) in developed countries stop taking them after a year, and adherence rates are even worse in developing countries. The WHO concludes that improving adherence requires multidisciplinary and multilevel interventions that take individual patients' experiences of illness seriously. The impact of non-compliance—through avoidable morbidity and mortality, the cost of additional medical interventions, and (indirectly) lost productivity at work—adds considerably to the costs of health care.¹

Providing access to accurate, balanced, evidence based, and comprehensive information about health-care options is particularly important in improving patients' adherence to treatment. When they are prescribed drugs, patients should also be . . . [Full text of this article]

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