Healthy Skepticism Library item: 10854

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Publication type: news

Reprieve for AME hotline
Pharmacy Daily (Australia) - registration required 2007 Jul 10
http://www.pharmacydaily.com.au/getdoc/0e3c2704-d25c-4127-b62b-37cc6d1ae063/Back-Issues.aspx

Full text:

HEALTH minister Tony Abbott has announced that the govt will provide funding to allow the Adverse Medicines Event phone service to continue for a further twelve months.

The move follows calls by both the PSA and the Guild for the line to continue after its Guild funding ceases at the end of the month.

From 01 Aug the Commonwealth will fund the service for a year “to ensure that consumers are provided with a way to seek help with or report adverse reactions to medicines,” Abbott said.

“During this time the service will be reviewed and options for future funding developed,” the minister added.

It’s been a wild ride for the line over the last year or two, with its survival threatened in 2006 when funding from the Australian Council for Safety and Quality in Healthcare was discontinued.

The Guild contributed $200,000 to keep the hotline active “as a goodwill gesture” but this funding runs out on 31 Jul and the Guild says it’s not in a position to fund it long term.

The AME line has seen significant publicity over the last few months as a result of the ongoing Stilnox controversy.

Dr Geraldine Moses, who runs the AME hotline, said she was “thrilled that the public will still have the line as an option to report their problems and concerns about drugs”.

The PSA said that the line had “highlighted serious deficiencies in post-marketing surveillance of medicines in Australia”.