International Guidelines for Pharmaceutical Donations 2011
International Guidelines for donations of medicines and medical supplies have been produced in consultation with the major international agencies active in humanitarian emergency relief and in supporting health services in developing countries. They are based on a set of core principles including maximum benefit for the recipient; respect for the wishes and authority of the recipient and support for existing government policies; no double standards in quality – if the quality of an item is unacceptable in the donor country, it is also unacceptable as a donation; after arrival in the recipient country all donated products should have a remaining shelf life of at least one year.
Click here to download the international guidelines.
Australian Donation Guidelines can be downloaded here
Donations of medicines – general principles
Beverley Snell
Individuals and organizations tend to respond to humanitarian emergencies and to people working in health programs in poor countries with an urgent desire to help. The media often highlight shortages of medicines. Donating medicines can seem a tangible way to express concern and solidarity. In both emergency and non-emergency situations requirements for pharmaceuticals should be determined through a comprehensive assessment of health problems and donations of cash can be a much more helpful response, allowing drugs relevant for the programs to be bought at a fraction of the cost of those bought and transported from the donor country. Click here to download the complete article.
Inappropriate Donations to Aceh following 2004 Tsunami click here
Inappropriate Donations to Sri Lanka following 2004 Tsunami click here
Understanding and responding to pharmaceutical promotion: A practical guide.
Pharmaceutical promotion influences how doctors and pharmacists choose to prescribe and dispense medicines. These decisions may, however, lead to sub-optimal treatment choices that damage public health and escalate health care costs.
Although the influence of pharmaceutical promotion starts early in medical and pharmacy students’ training, these students receive little to no instruction on how to assess promotion. To address this need, HAI and WHO published a manual that schools of medicine and pharmacy can use to train students how to recognise and respond to pharmaceutical promotion before they start prescribing and dispensing medicines. This educational tool enables students to critically analyse pharmaceutical promotion and access higher-quality, unbiased and independent information about medicines. See also Publications.
To download the manual click here