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Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse

Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse.

Big Pharma is profiting from both opioids and overdose treatments

Some of the pharmaceutical companies selling prescription opioids that have caused thousands of deaths are looking to profit from the antidote for overdoses, according to a VICE News analysis of drug approval records from Health Canada.

One emergency room doctor in Toronto who regularly reverses opioid overdoses with naloxone said the revelations show “companies [are] cynically profiting from both ends of the crisis” that claimed an estimated 4,000 lives in Canada last year.

Read more at Vice News

Purdue Pharma to stop marketing opioids to U.S. physicians, but policy not extended to Canada

The pharmaceutical giant that misled physicians and patients about the addictive properties of its top-selling drug OxyContin, fuelling an overdose crisis that has devastated communities across North America, will stop marketing opioids to U.S. physicians.

However, the new policy does not extend into Canada.

Purdue Pharma L.P. announced the change in a statement issued on the weekend.

Read more at The Globe and Mail

Mistreated

On a brisk spring day in 1965, Annie Michael stepped onto an airplane for the first time.

The 10-year-old had tested positive for tuberculosis, the airborne disease that had ravaged her hometown of Niaqunngut, a remote Baffin Island community southeast of Iqaluit. Her southbound flight was the first leg of a days-long journey to the Queen Mary Hospital for Tuberculous Children in Toronto.

While Michael’s stay at the hospital was meant to cure her potentially deadly condition, the experience left damage of another kind.

Read more at CBC News

Powerful opioid found in naloxone kit given out at Ontario pharmacy

The Ontario College of Pharmacists has launched an investigation after fentanyl was found in a naloxone kit assembled at an undisclosed pharmacy somewhere in the province.

According to a report in the Toronto Star, the powerful opioid was located in a kit that was given to a customer at a Shoppers Drug Mart on Monday.

Naxolone is used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.

Read more at CP24

Durham families share long-term care horror stories with Ontario NDP leader

OSHAWA — NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has added local stories of struggle with long-term care to her growing list of concerns about Ontario’s long-term care system.

Along with Oshawa MPP Jennifer French, Horwath recently met with three Durham families who discussed their difficulties in accessing quality long-term care for loved ones.

Read more at Durham Region News

Moncton pharmacist fined for drug-dispensing mistake that led to patient’s death

A Moncton pharmacist has been fined and reprimanded by the New Brunswick College of Pharmacists after someone on his staff made a dispensing error that led to the death of a patient in long-term care.

Although he didn’t make the error himself, Peter Ford, manager of Ford’s Family Pharmacy & Wellness Centre, was fined $5,000 for dispensing baclofen suspension, a muscle relaxant, at five times the concentration on the label.

Read more at CBC News

Ontario health minister probing medical regulator’s handling of 1990s complaints against doctors

In an unprecedented move, Health Minister Eric Hoskins is probing how Ontario’s medical regulator handled complaints against physicians in the mid-1990s, in the wake of a Star investigation about women accusing a prominent Brampton physician of groping them during a period stretching back 40 years.

Read more at Toronto Star

Pharmacy fraud is costing us millions. Why won’t Ontario take it more seriously?

There’s a way to pump millions of dollars into Ontario’s health-care system without raising taxes. All it requires is that the province take the abuse of its public drug plans more seriously.

Karen Voin, who works in fraud prevention for the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association, says the industry believes that between 2 and 10 per cent of all health-care dollars are lost to fraud.

Read more at TVO

Prescription drugs will become less safe if Health Canada has its way

In a little-noticed announcement in October 2017, Health Canada signalled its intention to raise the fees that drug makers will have to pay when they want to get a new medication on the market.

These user fees currently fund about 50 per cent of Health Canada’s operating budget for regulating prescription drugs. Health Canada wants to increase that to 90 per cent. In addition, it will rebate 25 per cent of that fee if it fails to review new drug applications within an established period of time.

Read more at Toronto Star