Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Ministry of Health: A little too late


The German company (Boehringer Ingelheim) that manifactures the drug Silomat® , a cough syrup, decided to withdraw the drug from the market because it predisposes to a potentially fatal side-effect called long QT syndrome, which can cause a cardiac arrest and subsequently, death.


Here's a link to their website with the announcement:



Our ministry of health, in turn, decided yesterday to withdraw the drug from the market, because they care for our lives.

The only problem, is that it happened eight weeks late. The warning about long QT syndrome came out on August 31st and we responded eight weeks after that.

Imagine a drug that had to be taken off the shelves of European pharamacies being sold for 2 months in our country without anyone in our ministry interferring to do anything about it.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were too busy closing up shawerma places to notice the news that pharamcy students around the world were aware of.


12 comments:

Unknown said...

It was Ramadan, no one wants to work in Ramadan and all year long.

Anonymous said...

Is it for cough ??
Will they alert the people who already have it??

Isam said...

I think this name is familiar ... what's the med used for ??

and ur name is Ammar right ? cuz yesterday i deicovered there is another blogger named Ammar and i think maybe i mixed up ... :S

Hareega said...

firas... yes there's always an excuse!

noura, yes it's for cough, also to prevent ageing -by killing you when you're still young-

isam... i think you mixed up lol, i'm not Ammar

the med is for cough

Qabbani said...

الأدوية والعلاجات صارت متل تجارة الحشيش الشاطر يلي بخليك تدمن على دوا و يقصف عمرك على البدري

Isam said...

sorry man ... Dr. Hareega it is :)

Anonymous said...

Nonsense. I have been using this medicine for years and I am ....ARGHHH....AAGGHH....hel....p

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Anonymous said...

They r working by my favourite motto:'That which doesn't kill u makes u stronger'.There r a lot of med alerts coming out around the world but no one really reads nor is interested enough to know and care.There should be a team of clinical pharmacists and doctors in the ministry having the sole job of reading updates and keeping watch for any new studies or bans of drugs...and ideally even conducting studies of their own,but i guess that is still a dream for us,though we boast about our premium health services and great doctors.They say we have limited resources though it only takes a computer and internet access and a few hours a day....

asoom said...

I got stuck on the part where you used "ministry of health" which is a fancy sounding term reserved for the europeans and emulated by the middle east, so I was about to reply back and say I think in amayrcha we call it "FDA", simply food and drug administration.

but then I clicked on your link and realized you were in fact referring to Jordan when you said "our ministry of health" My bad.....

On a side note, I don't understand how everyone goes to amman and comes back with 20JD "accutane"

Hareega said...

caroline ... i totally agree. IT's something that wouldn't cost lots of money but needs some people to read and investigate. Tehy don't even experts to do this job, just people to read the warnings. I'm afraid the ministry is not that innocent and some pharamcies might benefit a lot from purchasing these medications for very low prices (because they're being discarded in europe) and selling them in Jordan

Hareega said...

asoom... accutane is a very serious drug, it shouldn't be sold over the counter!!

bella said...

unbelievable...wallahi a shame.
you would think in this day and age, our ministy would pretend to care about its citizens and actually keep up!