Thank you.
The only death I ever reported was my own daughter's death, which was the day after she died, because I never felt anything useful was being done with the reports. We focused at the time on research.
We know the doctors don't generally report adverse drug reactions for a range of reasons. In fact, there's a form in the back of that big blue book that they all have in their office, the Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties. Most doctors have never used it or don't even know it's there.
One reason is that they're afraid of being sued. In fairness, sometimes it's difficult to identify adverse drug reactions, because they haven't been trained to do so. Sometimes they have 40 patients waiting in the waiting room and they don't want to take the time to fill out paperwork to the government, although with modern technology it's pretty easy to log on and fill out a form that says “suspected adverse reaction”.
So we support the initiative starting in the hospitals. We would also support patients reporting adverse drug reactions, if it's a robust system, because patients can provide more detailed information on what they experience. But there have to be people on the other end who are taking that information and doing something with it.
Another reason doctors don't report is that they haven't felt, for years, that anyone was doing anything with that information.
I looked up recently the most popular drug. The highest-selling drug in the world is a cholesterol-lowering drug--Lipitor. There are 2,000 adverse drug reaction reports on the Health Canada website. In our view that means there have been 200,000 adverse drug reactions that were so significant that the doctor, the health care professional, or the patients themselves had logged on and ordered....
By the way, the reporting of adverse drug reactions on the Health Canada website is the only significant change that we have seen in the eight years since Vanessa died. It's the only thing that has been carried out to improve the situation.
There was an inquest into Vanessa's death a year after she died. There were 59 recommendations made by the jury, and it's the only significant change we've seen.
So change is due. This is a great opportunity to make positive change.