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Drug-safety watchdog urges new government to restore funding

Researchers at the UBC-based Therapeutics Initiative, which serves as a drug-safety watchdog for British Columbians, say it’s crucial the Health Ministry restore the group’s funding.

Researchers at the UBC-based Therapeutics Initiative, which serves as a drug-safety watchdog for British Columbians, say it’s crucial the Health Ministry restore the group’s funding.

During the election, the NDP accused the Liberal government of trying to shut down the independent research group, which assesses the safety and efficacy of pharmaceuticals in B.C. NDP Leader Adrian Dix promised to double the ailing group’s funding to $2 million.

Following a stunning Liberal majority victory Tuesday, Therapeutics Initiative co-directors Dr. Jim Wright and Dr. Ken Bassett are appealing to the new government to restore their funding.

“We are convinced that our objective drug assessment and educational work since 1994 has helped the government save hundreds of millions of dollars every year and significantly improved British Columbians’ health by avoiding toxicity and even deaths from drugs subsequently removed from the market,” Wright and Bassett said in a statement Thursday.

The statement says high-quality, objective drug assessments require sophisticated training and a multidisciplinary group. “If B.C. is to maintain this capacity, it is crucial that the Ministry of Health resume discussions with UBC to restore Therapeutics Initiative funding as quickly as possible.”

During the election, Dix said the research group has an international reputation for keeping patients safe and controlling health-care costs, adding the agency has discovered potentially lethal side-effects in several highly promoted pharmaceuticals, including Vioxx and Avandia, and is credited with preventing complications and deaths.

In recent years, Therapeutics Initiative has been crippled by successive funding cuts and most recently, the suspension of its government-funding agreement under the Liberal government.

Funding was slashed almost in half to $550,000 in April 2012. In September, the government suspended its “contribution agreement” with UBC as part of a still-ongoing Health Ministry investigation started in May 2012 into alleged privacy breaches in the ministry’s pharmaceutical services branch. Seven ministry staff were fired and, as part of the fallout, Therapeutics Initiative had its data-sharing and funding contracts suspended.

Since then, UBC has kept Therapeutics Initiative afloat, but says honorariums that support three staff will no longer be paid after the end of June.

UBC says it is caught in the middle and once the Health Ministry’s investigation “is resolved,” the project and its funding are expected to resume.

However, there’s no word on when the ministry’s year-long investigation will be concluded.

Therapeutics Initiative is one of five groups contracted for research during the third step of the review process before a drug is added to B.C.’s list of funded drugs. The first two steps include a safety review by Health Canada and a national review by the Common Drug Review.

Before the research group’s funding was suspended in September, planned projects included reviews of new anti-coagulants such as dabigatran, and hospitalizations and deaths associated with those drugs.

“We would welcome the opportunity to continue working with the re-elected government of Premier Christy Clark and her new minister of health,” said Wright and Bassett.

ceharnett@timescolonist.com