Growing lavender not only can create sweeps of intense fragrance and drifts of soft color but also ensures an abundance of flowers at harvest time.
Photo By Christian Jung/Fotolia
Everyday Living® Your information source for products, shopping, marketing and business services, health matters, home and garden, food and lesiure, weight loss, anti-ageing surgical procedures and non-surgical rejuvenation treatments. www.everydayliving.com®
Why
Canada's 'slow and low' approach is the prudent one to take
By Alan
Cassels
Expert Advisor EvidenceNetwork.ca |
VICTORIA, BC/ Troy
Media/ - The newest
report from Canada's brand name drug makers on access to new drugs has one
key message: compared to other countries, Canada goes slow and low. New drugs
are slower to be covered by our provincial drug plans and the numbers of people
who get access to new drugs are lower than in other countries. The report is
undeniably negative: Canadians are suffering because our governments don't
provide timely access to new medicines.
Produced by Rx&D (the association of Canada's brand
name drug manufacturers), the report ranks Canada 17thout of 18 industrialized nations in terms of new
drug reimbursement - with only 23 per cent of new medicines covered across the
country (it is closer to 90 per cent in the U.S.). As far as the time it takes
between when a drug gets approved by Health Canada and when the provinces start
paying for it, Canada ranks 16thof 18 countries.
Canada's drug makers
believe that drug plans in Canada should be more generous and access should be
simplified so when new and innovative medications come along - those to conquer
cancer, heart disease or other life-threatening conditions - government health
plans should quickly pay for them. After all, if they extend the length and
quality of our lives, we citizens deserve them, right?
But
here's the rub: what prescribers know about the potential benefits and harms of
a new drug when they arrive on the market is often uncertain or problematic. As
new drugs are often studied for a shorter period of time and with a very
specific population, the studies often end up with biases, with unpublished data
and without a full sense of the overall safety of the drug in the real
population.
Canada
approach of taking the time to decide how, or if, a new drug needs to be covered
is the smart way to go. For example, the widely prescribed arthritis drug Vioxx
caused as many as 60,000 excess heart attack deaths in North America according
to some estimates. But those Canadian provinces which were more restrictive in
covering it (such as B.C.) likely had proportionally fewer deaths caused by the
drug.
According
to a new
report, the number of new cases of cancer in
Canada will rise dramatically over the next 15 years, mostly due to baby boomers
acquiring more diseases of aging - and this will drive the demand for more and
more effective cancer drugs.
But
there is plenty of evidence to suggest caution in approaching this new reality.
A recent
article in the British Medical
Journal by two noteworthy pharmaceutical
industry analysts, Donald Light and fellow Expert Advisor Joel Lexchin, made the
case that cancer drugs are often rushed to market and have faster approvals even
when they provide very little gain for patients.
Their
study, Why do cancer drugs get such an easy ride?, examined nearly 9,000
oncology clinical trials conducted between 2007 and 2010 and compared those
studies to drugs for other diseases. They found that cancer drugs were almost
three times less likely to be evaluated in randomized studies or tested against
comparator drugs, and were more likely to be 'fast-tracked' in approvals than
other drugs, casting doubt on the long-term benefit and safety of the drugs.
There's
also a little bit of sleight of hand around what's being measured. Does it
matter if a clinical trial of a new cancer drug gets approved because it shrinks
a tumour as opposed to making the patient live longer or healthier? The reality
is that many cancer drugs can shrink tumours quite effectively (and expensively)
but may not change the length of a person's life, while possibly turning the
last few months of a person's life into medically-intensive misery.
We
all want access to newer and better drugs but could we better spend our cancer
budgets towards an array of non-drug options that improve the lives of people
with cancer? Do we want to continue to allow expensive drug intensive therapy to
eclipse all the other things we could do for cancer patients and their
families?
Wildly
expensive new cancer drugs are eating a growing share of our healthcare dollars
and provinces are clearly voting with their budgets, going slow and low on
approvals and coverage of new therapies. Canada's drug manufacturers are
condemning us for this approach, but they're wrong - regardless of how
strenuously they try to paint Canadians as poor suffering underdogs with stingy
and heartless healthcare systems.
Alan
Cassels is a pharmaceutical policy researcher in Victoria and an expert advisor
with EvidenceNetwork.ca.
|
July , 2015 HALIFAX, NS – Registered innoviCares members can now manage their health- care through the updated patient portal on innoviCares.ca. This new addition supports innoviCares’ mission to empower patients by offering greater choice and broader access to brand-name drugs and medical devices. “With the new My Medicine Cabinet, patients can keep track of current and previous medications, vitamins and personal care items easily and all in one place,” says Debbie Fougere, innoviCares Product Manager. “Refill reminders can be set to ensure patients never miss a pick-up again. They can also see how early or late refills for innoviCares products are being picked up, in the new Report Card section. Each feature was designed to help patients better manage their health-care.” InnoviCares is a free, supplemental patient benefit plan available to all Canadians with a valid email address. Regardless of existing public or private plan coverage, innoviCares allows patients to receive the brand-name medications and health-care products prescribed by a physician at an equal or similar price to the generic alternative(s). As always, innoviCares features are free to registered innoviCares cardholders. For more information, or to become an innoviCares member, visit www.innoviCares.ca. |
The
blue lotus or blue water lily was used in ancient Egypt as a key to good health,
sex and rebirth. It puts the good in "feel
good."
|