From The Irish Times
  • Only one in 10 Irish GPs and even fewer hospital doctors are reporting the adverse side-effects of pharmaceuticals to the Irish Medicines Board (IMB) each year, an Oireachtas subcommittee heard yesterday, writes John Downes.

    Research published in Australia this year has suggested that serious adverse drug reactions are detected in 50 per cent of new drugs after their approval for market following clinical trials, the health and children subcommittee was told.

    Dr Orla O'Donovan, of the Department of Applied Social Studies at University College Cork, said the number of such adverse reactions reported to the IMB stood at 1,727 in 2004, of which 277 reports were submitted by GPs.

    She noted that more than 2,500 GPs in the Republic prescribe to at least 100 people per week, many of whom receive more than one medicine. This indicated that one in 10 practitioners on average submit just one adverse reaction report a year. Assuming every report came from a different doctor, it was also estimated that fewer than 4 per cent of some 4,000 hospital doctors made one report per year, Dr O'Donovan added.

    "The under-reporting of adverse drug reactions poses a serious problem to ensuring the safety of medicines," she said in her presentation. "The moral obligations on health professionals to report adverse drug reactions needs to be emphasised."