Open letter to Annette King, Minister of Health, New Zealand: Official response is misleading

doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7463.460-c

BMJ 2004;329:460-461 (21 August), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7463.460-c

Letter

Open letter to Annette King, Minister of Health, New Zealand

Official response is misleading

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

EDITOR—Matheson says that it is misleading for Herxheimerin his open letter to New Zealand's health minister to reportthat Medsafe, the New Zealand medicines regulator, intendedto stop funding the intensive medicines monitoring programme(previous letter).^1
2 Notice was given to the University ofOtago on 4 March 2004 that funding would be withdrawn as of30 June. Medsafe's intention was demonstrated further by thewithdrawal of all usual references to the programme from thelatest issue of their publication Prescriber Update, and fromtheir web site. It is Matheson's letter that is misleading.

Matheson is also critical of the fact that the collection ofdata comes from multiple sources and is largely paper-based.He overlooks the fact that the programme has no operationalalternative because of failure of Medsafe or the ministry tohave prescriptions for monitored medicines recorded by a centralagency. This is in . . . [Full text of this article]

David Coulter, retired

264 Highgate, Roslyn, Dunedin 9001, New Zealand dmcoulter@xtra.co.nz