The Patient's Dilemma
The government has sent instructions to pharmaceutical companies to discontinue production of drugs derived from terfenadine. This was done after being convinced by a WHO warning that the drug produced severe side-effects including death. The drug came into global use as being effective in the treatment of cough allergy, stuffed nose etc and earned quick popularity as this was, unlike all anti-histamines, non-sedative, producing no drowsiness. As many as nine local manufacturers have been making and distributing this drug using different brand names such as dinafine, servinin, nosidan and fenadiul.
The news, reported yesterday, is indeed very disquieting. Can't there be other drugs in use in Bangladesh which have such side-effects? How can we be sure there aren't? What if there are? Can we identify them on our own? As far as we know we have as yet no system of testing a drug on a 'control' population of patients over a broad timeframe. So?
There is, however, no need to run a scare campaign. Our pharmaceutical establishments mainly copy drugs in vogue in Europe and America and go by British or American pharmacopoeia. Neither these companies nor the government drug administration conduct any pre-marketing tests or post-marketing clinical trial feeling that the drugs copied from western brands do not need to go through such testing. But this is hardly the whole picture. Our pharmaceutical companies do fabricate many brands of usables and eatables that are touted and accepted as having medicinal effect. Then there is a whole array of so-called ayurvedic and unani concoctions of improved capacity for good and harm.
The drug administration could at least do one thing before developing things that would justify its name and office. They could ban advertisement in newspapers and other media such bill-boards of such fare. This is a funny and dangerous situation that while proven medicine to be prescribed by licensed physicians, are not advertised under a worldwide convention - all the advertising time and apace are there for the spurious drugs of the demimonde.
As long as we do not come of age in the matter of medical and pharmaceutical research and industry we shall continue to be living by luck or dying by the same.
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