Pharmaceutical sciences

The International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) is the global federation of national organisations of pharmacists and pharmaceutical scientists dedicated to improving the access to and value of appropriate medicine use, and contributing to changes in science, practice and health policies worldwide.

This website was created as a resource for people interested in drug quality and drug information and will provide vital information to those working in drug management programs worldwide. The focus is to provide information on priority medicines that are of interest to health care professionals working in developing countries. In addition, the site will discuss drug quality issues-focusing on substandard and counterfeit drugs.

Medscape has combined two drug databases on the web into one comprehensive resource. Information from the National Drug Data File from FirstDataBank, and the American Hospital Formulary Service Drug Information reference from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP). Find information on drug-drug and drug-food interactions, uses and dosage, preparations, adverse effects, and four other categories for every drug. Patient education handouts are available for printing and distributing.

Fake and substandard drugs in Africa by immoral medical companies is a serious worry. Malaria continues to be a serious concern. It affects more than 100 countries and about 40percent of the worlds population. It causes between 300 and 500 million infections and about a million deaths each year. It is estimated that malaria kills a child every 30 seconds in spite of the disease being entirely preventable and curable. At the eighth World Health Assembly meeting in 1955, it was resolved to begin a worldwide eradication campaign of malaria. Though the campaign was eventually abandoned and considered a failure, it registered resounding successes in eradicating malaria from large regions across the globe. The successful application of insecticides and the effectiveness of antimalarial treatments formed the cornerstones of the programme.

The health department has called for bids for the next AIDS-drug tender, a move keenly awaited by local pharmaceutical firms that invested heavily in developing capacity to make generic copies of patented antiretroviral medicines. SA has the worlds biggest caseload of HIV patients, with about 5,4-million people infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

CAPE TOWN The governments plans to drive down medicine prices by benchmarking them against other countries could cut multinational pharmaceutical firms local revenues by about 35%, say industry sources.

The health department has corrected a confusing notice it issued last month on the pricing of nonprescription medicines, making it clear that schedule 0 products are exempt from the two key provisions in the Medicines Act that control prices.

On Friday, 1 December 2006, five sets of regulations were published by the Department of Health.

An illegal medicines industry is rocketing out of control as unregistered products - many claiming to cure diseases such as cancer, TB and AIDS - are sold across the counter or on the streets.

An independent report which has just been released has revealed that the average cost of medicines has dropped by just over 8% in South Africa since December 2004.