Parliament : Do you know what you've done?
17 July 2007

"The RMI (Researched Medicines Industry Association) fears for the future supply of new prescription medicines now that the legislation establishing ANZTPA, the joint trans-Tasman agency has been stymied.

"New Zealanders now risk missing out on new medicines available in the rest of the developed world," the RMI chair, Dr Pippa MacKay said.

"The lobby that killed the legislation was at best ill informed. The responsible part, and majority, of the complementary industry pointed out that the opponents were not letting the facts get in the way of a good story," she commented.

"There is now a vacuum. The legislation would have resolved existing medicines registration problems. The New Zealand regulator, Medsafe, does not have the capacity to process applications to register new medicines within a reasonable timeframe. It currently takes an average of three years for a medicine to be evaluated. More than twice as long as in Australia.

"This unacceptable delay, along with last year's 800% increase in fees has meant that there have been only four applications for the registration of new medicines since August last year," she explained.

"The intense debate about complementaries ignored the needs of seriously ill New Zealanders who need prescription medicines. The logic of entering into a 50:50 partnership with Australia to jointly regulate medicines was by far and away the best solution to an ongoing problem.

"Now New Zealanders, patients, their doctors and the industry are left with no options but to make do, simply because of this intense, misleading and emotive lobbying," she said.

"It is a shame that those same people demand that food be regulated for safety reasons, yet somehow naively expect that the labels on complementary medicines from unknown sources should be believed.

"This is third-world politicking. The needs and interests of the majority have been overridden by a tiny self-interested minority generating misinformation." Dr MacKay said.

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