The NDP is calling on the Liberal government to protect a drug-safety watchdog group from future funding cutbacks by making it a permanent part of the province’s health-care system.
It is currently on contract.
The B.C. government restored funding and data access on Tuesday to UBC’s Therapeutics Initiative, which assesses drugs covered under B.C.’s PharmaCare program, and a UVic group studying Alzheimer’s disease.
The groups lost funding and access in September 2012 as the Health Ministry investigated a privacy breach in its pharmaceutical services division. The investigation continues but the Health Ministry said it has improved its data privacy and security, allowing data access to be restored. The Liberals indicated in the summer they would make this move.
NDP leader Adrian Dix said Wednesday that the restoration of funding is a vindication of the world-class and objective research group but said the Liberals have tried to dismantle the Therapeutics Initiative over the past 12 years, since it was brought into existence under the former NDP government.
“I’ve been working for most of my time as an MLA to fight off government efforts to close the Therapeutics Initiative,” Dix said, in a media scrum. “I think successive premiers have attacked the Therapeutics Initiative even though it saves lives, improves the health-care system money, and saves the government money.”
In 2008, a pharmaceutical-industry dominated panel formed by the B.C. Liberals to rethink drug reviews concluded the Therapeutics Initiative should be dismantled or that its work should be reduced.
Patients, doctors and the drug industry who are critical of the Therapeutics Initiative because they want to see drugs for chronic illnesses put on the market faster, for example, applauded the recommendation. More groups are now doing clinical reviews and the Therapeutics Initiative must compete for that research each year.
In 2010-2011, the watchdog group’s base funding was cut almost in half to $550,000 from $1 million. In the provincial election the NDP had promised to boost the Initiative’s funding to $2 million.
The Liberals argue that until 2003, the Therapeutics Initiative was the only independent body reviewing clinical evidence for drugs considered for B.C. PharmaCare coverage. Now the B.C. government contributes $615,000 to the independent drug review process called the Common Drug Review (CDR) which does the majority of independent evaluations of new drugs for governments across the country.
The Therapeutics Initiative only does those evaluations not reviewed by the CDR and therefore it’s funding was reduced, according to the Health Ministry.
Dix said preservation of the drug-safety watchdog group is essential.
“It’s even more necessary now, I would argue, with the significant increases in the cost of prescription drugs and continued efforts to sell prescription drugs in Canada and in North America that we have an independent voice reviewing the quality of prescription drugs.”
The NDP leader and NDP health critic Judy Darcy recommended Wednesday either establishing an endowment for the Therapeutics Initiative or making it a standing line item in the budget.
The NDP argues the Therapeutics Initiative’s clinical research and reports to doctors saves the government about 14 per cent on it’s approximate $1 billion PharmaCare budget by stopping unwarranted spending on drugs proven to be ineffective drugs or that have unacceptable side effects.
ceharnett@timescolonist.com
