Two doctors write in a chronicle that every year,thousands of children in Norway perceive that the medicine they need is not available.
Instead of receiving antibiotics and other medications in forms and doses that are adapted to children, they receive adult medicine that must be divided wrote Henrik Irgens and Ketil Størdal in Dagsavisen newspaper. Irgens is in the National Competence Network for medicines for children. Størdal is the head of the Norwegian Children’s Association.
“Because the smallest children struggle to swallow tablets, and need a lower dose than adults, they have been mixed. They can then take the medicine and get it in an efficient way” Irgens told the newspaper.
Instead,the children may end up taking tablets that taste bad and that they have big problems ingesting these.
The two doctors criticised the authorities for not taking control of the pharmaceutical industry, but rather relying on market mechanisms to ensure the supply of medicines.
“But the market mechanism does not work, since the earning potential of children’s mixtures is low” said Irgens.
Senior Advisor to the pharmaceutical industry’s industry organization LMI, Inge Johansen, said the paedeatric medicine shortage is because the Norwegian market is small.
“It’s a political goal to have the lowest possible price.Together with relatively low demand, it means that you get a pressured market’’ he explained.
© NTB scanpix / #Norway Today
I still remember what a doctor in our hometown used to say “Give your child a good food which consists of fruits and mother milk so that he/she does not has to fulfill that need with medicines which come with sometimes side effects too. We hardly go into the background of some problem and here background is why children are requiring such a huge amount of medicines. I am also affiliated with Windsor a Caribbean medicines university and I believe everybody should get basic knowledge about medicines so that it can help him/her in being healthy the whole life after all you are your best friend.