The law establishing the national health service establishes that the scientific information service on medicines for human use, and the control of any undesirable effects of the same, are the responsibility of the State.
Currently, on behalf of the Ministry, the scientific information service on the drug is assured to the doctor by the scientific informants of the manufacturing companies, so that the health system can have a constant update on the therapeutic characteristics of the drug, its limitations in use, and, above all, its undesirable effects.
The scientific information workers so far they have been the category of workers appointed to ensure this important service to the citizen. These workers with high social value are provided with adequate preparation, as evidenced by the type of degree they must have. The informants they are also trained and updated on a daily basis by the scientific service of the companies they depend on, being protected in their daily work activity for the protection of the patient, through an employment relationship, and indefinitely. Their salary is independent of sales.
All this has guaranteed the citizen a high level of correctness of scientific information on drugs, and also a constant monitoring service on the risks and undesirable effects that drugs can, let us not forget, produce.
Today, however, things are no longer like this and these workers, fired by the thousands in the last three years, feel like a category on the verge of extinction. With the excuse of the crisis, the current economic trend is to make precarious employment relationships. This, together with the chronic lack of controls in a very delicate sector such as human health, you see replace the informant with a permanent contract with the precarious informant, i.e. precarious young people hired with contracts of a few months, and paid with the commissions on the drug sold. The more you sell the more you earn, the contraindications of the drugs become an impediment to the sale and profit.
All this, unfortunately, in addition to depriving the system of valid professionalism, formed through years of experience, enormously reduces the protections towards the sick. And of this the citizen must be informed.
March 28, 2011 — newsoldo
