THEY ARE THE FIRST PROBLEM to face for those who have to take care of themselves at home and have a more or less serious condition. Indeed, paradoxically, the approach with the 'leaflet' – the leaflet that accompanies the drug – often seems to hide difficulties that are inversely proportional to the complexity of the disease. The incomprehensible terms, the terrifying hypotheses, the digressions into territories absolutely beyond the reach of the man of average and even superior culture, are very frequent precisely in commonly used medicines.
SO MUCH THAT the world of patients being treated has been divided for years and years into two large hemispheres: those who resist reading the 'leaflet' and take the drug making a real leap of faith in the doctor who prescribed it and in good fortune , and that of those who can't make it. So he gives up, and gives up, at the first or second painstaking reading of the instructions. Then there is a third sector, a minority in terms of numbers, which however appears in all social and health research: it is made up above all of young people and people who don't mind documenting themselves. They are few, and they are the ones that practically do not even open the leaflet with instructions and contraindications. They swallow the pill or get the injection, and off they go. Which, sometimes, doesn't turn out to be a good choice.
For the others, millions of people who have been waiting patiently for decades for our local 'liars' to become understandable, readable in terms of font size and 'friends' of those who have to use the drug, there is good news. It comes from the Italian Medicines Association (Aifa) which is an autonomous public body, obviously guided by the directives of the Ministry of Health. And the good news, given personally by Dr. Antonio Addis, director general of the AIFA information sector, is that the very long gestation of new 'liars' (which began when the holder of the Ministry of Health was Girolamo Sirchia), is starting term. In short, only a handful of months would separate (the conditional is a must given the times of Italian bureaucracy) our national consumers from the advent of a leaflet with the instructions for 'revisited' medicines, says Addis. It is "harmonized with the guidelines that have been in force for some time in other European countries". Therefore, written with larger characters than the current ones ("for eye drops, above all"), filled with the essential data concerning the medicine, pruned from the dozens of very strange and improbable pathologies hypothetically related to the improper use of the molecule. «Behind the new leaflet - explains Addis - there is a long work carried out by a group of experts from various disciplines: from sociologists to communication and international standards specialists.
STUDY the major criticalities of our leaflets, we have worked to eliminate them. Now the basic lines are ready, and they must be compared with the various categories and associations, starting with those of consumers».
In short, the patient-friendly 'leaflet' arrives, written with commonly used words such as 'high blood pressure' instead of 'hypertension'; with the exact translation of terms unknown to most, such as 'etiology' and 'etiopathogenesis'; with useful warnings for allergy sufferers positioned in full view, and above all immediately understandable.
"Now that the drugs are also on sale in supermarkets and the elderly population is increasing, often entrusted to foreign carers - notes the president of the Order of Pharmacists of Ravenna, Domenico Dal Re, who is also in the top management of Federfarma - the revision of the 'liars' can no longer be postponed».
According to AIFA experts, «even the leaflet paper must be changed, because it is often
