Newsletter no 21
Hello again to all our subscribers.
The battle continues to protect New Zealand's future health freedoms.
- Govt likely to announce yet another delay to their plans
- Overview of the NZ scene post election
- Update from Australia
- Adverse Reaction Reports
- SOS Post cards progress
The NZ Health Trust is pleased to report that as expected the Government has
announced, yet again, that their plans to start the TTTGA have to be delayed. You
may recall that this agency was planned to have started operations 1 July
2005. The Government though underestimated public opposition and
found itself unable to get the support it needed in Parliament. Despite
the PR spin they tried to pass off on us, this lack of support was the
reason they were forced to delay the proposed start date by 12 months to
1 July 2006.
Well NZ and Australian Parliamentary representatives have met again
in Australia to discuss the need for yet another delay. The Government,
despite all its considerable resources being directed into trying to convince
fellow politicians and industry that this agency is necessary and a good
thing, still can't get enough support and won't risk putting the legislation
before the house unless they are sure they have the numbers to get it passed.
The result is that the proposed start date has been put off
further but this time without giving any new target to risk further
embarrassment of this type. We can all take this as a small victory
- without the support we have received and the work that has been done
by many people - we would have lost the health freedoms that this
agency seeks to take from us many months ago.
The official line once again is along the lines of the decision
to put it off further being so they can "undertake further consultation
and ensure the new agency meets the needs of New Zealand" - as the
billboards say, "Yeah Right!"
As the dust settles we are very pleased to see that Labour is still
a minority Government with an even more tenuous grasp on power than it
had previously. It cannot force the TTTGA on NZ without convincing
several of the minor parties to support it. We know that so far all
the major opposition parties have refused to support Labour and we will
continue to work with them as much as we can in this regard.
The New Health Select Committee has been named and Sue Kedgley
from the Green Party, who have been staunch supporters of NZ's health freedoms
throughout this issue, has been named as the Chairperson. We are
also very pleased to announce that once again the Labour party will not
have a majority on this committee. While rumours suggest that Labour
may try and have the draft legislation sent to a different committee that
may have a more 'favourable' membership, we will not permit any such attempts
to manipulate the system to go unnoticed. Watch this space.....
Finally we have noted that although Annette King has been deposed as
Health Minister, she has some how retained her status as the Labour front
person for the TTTGA proposal. Could it be that no one else in
Labour wants to get tarred with the looming defeat in this matter?
Thank you for all the submissions you sent to the Australian Senate
Inquiry into the proposed Therapeutic Goods Amendment Act via the Contact
your MP’s page, this is the Act that would make the penalties
the TGA can impose even more draconian than ever. We understand that these
submissions received considerable attention in the Australian Parliament.
You may have seen some press coverage recently about the TGA 'agreeing'
to an informal review system for the infringement notices they can now
impose. But we have serious concerns as to the true impartiality
of any such review panel. Also note that the TGA can still make a
media announcement about any steps they take even if those steps are later
shown to have been without any justification. Anyone in business
though will know that the damage is done by the media reports, being cleared
some months later will never make up for the "death by press release" the
TGA may already have inflicted.
More recently a report has been released by Deloitte which was highly
critical of the TGA procedures. As the NZHT has been saying for years
- the TGA is a disaster and the Deloitte report confirms this. Like
the Australian National Audit Office report last year, the Deloitte's report
criticizes the agency's structure and transparency, accountability and
governance. This emphasizes yet again that NZ should NOT be looking
to take on an agency that is becoming to be so widely recognised in its
home jurisdiction as dysfunctional.
Adverse Reaction Reporting
New to the NZHT web site is the adverse reaction reporting facility
created in conjunction with Helen and Donald Saville-Cook of Dunedin who
are the coordinators
This system has come about as a result of the indications that adverse
reactions to prescription medicines in New Zealand and significantly under
reported. These new pages allow consumers to directly report what
they believe to be adverse reactions they have experienced to prescription
medication to assist the health authorities to properly monitor the effect
of such medicines.
The reports can be filled in on line or printable forms can be downloaded
filled in and sent by mail or fax. The completed forms will to be
sent to (CARM) the Centre for Adverse Reaction Monitoring as well as the
Ministry of Health. A confidential copy is also retained by NZHT
to ensure the data released by the regulators properly reflects the information
we know they have received.
If you lodge a report you may be contacted by your health professional
or a Ministry of Health official in response to your report. We encourage
anyone who believes they have suffered or are suffering an adverse reaction
to prescription medication to complete the reports to ensure proper post
market surveillance of such medicines.
Save our Supplements Cards
The NZHT "S.O.S." support cards are going really well and have helped
us to build up an impressive bank of supporters that can't help but have
an impact with the MP's when the time comes for them to cast their votes. What
we have noticed though is that the return rate of cards we send out is
lower than we would like. What we have found to be the most successful
method is to ask your friends and contacts to complete the forms straight
away and then you can gather the completed cards together to send back
to us in one envelope. Saves postage and we get a better hit rate.
Click here to order on line
http://nzhealthtrust.co.nz/support_forms.html
Our thanks as ever to those of you who commit your time to having these
cards completed and spreading the message about the concerns related to
the TTTGA. Even after the last four years of talking to people and
media contacts, there are still so many people who know nothing about this
issue. People often ask us - what is the best thing they can do to
help, for now the answer is sign the cards, get your friends to sign them
and then tell as many people as you can about this problem and send them
to our web site for more information. If they sign up to receive
this newsletter then they can be sure they'll be kept up to date about
what's happening and what we need to do to win this fight.
As ever we thank you for your ongoing support and invite you to pass
this email to as many of your friends and contacts as you can.
Kind Regards
Dave Sloan
