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Biotech / Medical : PFE (Pfizer) How high will it go? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BigKNY3 who wrote (6506)	12/18/1998 12:07:00 AM
From: BigKNY3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9523

Doctors told to defy NHS ban on Viagra SARAH BOSELEY HEALTH CORRESPONDENT 12/17/98 The Guardian DOCTORS are being urged by the British Medical Association to take matters into their own hands and prescribe Viagra on the NHS in defiance of the ban imposed three months ago. Yesterday Ian Bogle, chairman of the BMA Council, told Frank Dobson, the Health Secretary, that the Government had been dragging its feet over the pill for too long, placing doctors in 'an impossible position'. They were in breach of their terms of service by failing to give impotent men the best treatment available on the NHS. The BMA was disappointed in the way the Viagra issue had been dealt with, Dr Bogle told Mr Dobson in a letter. 'I have been asked to relay to you council's dissatisfaction at the way in which the introduction of this medicine has been handled.' He said that doctors 'have been left with no choice but to prescribe Viagra to their patients, where clinically indicated, under the NHS while aware that official sanction us still awaited'. The promised Department of Health guidelines, he told Mr Dobson, 'would now be almost irrelevant as doctors have responded to the needs of their patients in spite of the temporary 'ban'.' Mr Dobson told health authorities, trusts and doctors on September 14 that Viagra should be prescribed on the NHS only 'in exceptional circumstances' until the Standing Medical Advisory Committee had investigated and reported back. The committee met on October 28. Although the department said the promised guidelines on prescribing Viagra would be issued within weeks, three months have passed. The BMA does not know how many doctors are prescribing Viagra on the NHS, but it has received calls from many seeking advice. They are confronted by patients they diagnose as clinically impotent, but are unable to prescribe Viagra for them. Some have been prescribing it on the NHS anyway, some have been asking their health authority for permission to do so, and others have been issuing private prescriptions, which is also a breach of their terms of service, since Viagra is technically an NHS drug. George Rae, chairman of the prescribing sub-committee of the BMA, said: 'We have been put in an invidious position. Viagra has got a product licence and is available to patients. We have been put in a no man's land, feeling it is very difficult to help our patients. 'For a very short time, that might have been acceptable, but time has moved on. Enough is enough. There is this product here and there is clinical need. It is felt that Viagra should be prescribed.' The department was unmoved. 'We have issued guidelines which are quite clear and take a common sense approach to Viagra prescribing. We will shortly issue a substantive policy. Meanwhile, our guidelines stand,' it said in a statement.