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I have returned recently from the National Medicines Conference that was convened in Canberra by the PHARM committee and the NPS.
PHARM stands for Pharmaceutical Health and Rational Use of Medicines and NPS , the National Prescribing Service. PHARM is concerned with policy making and advising on QUM and the NPS is the organisation on the ground implementing Quality Use of Medicine initiatives across Australia.

Both organisations sit on one (QUM) arm of the Australian Medicines Policy.
There are four arms dedicated to the policy that address drug industry, drug regulation, drug supply (equity & access) and QUM.
I found it very impressive to witness the policy in action and the speakers who addressed the issues were most capable and aware of the challenges ahead in providing a sustainable and equitable medicines use in our community.
Dr Mary Moran from Medicine sans frontiers movingly placed us in the World picture when she described her work in Africa and other 3rd world countries where diseases that are endemic decimate populations and the only drugs available to treat them are those from the 1920s or are not available through lack of drug development.
Drug development and research is pointedly commercially driven and the ethical considerations of this were considered.
How much consideration should be given by economically privileged communities to their neighbors in this global village in ensuring life saving drugs are available and a program of research and development utilising modern technological techniques is in place?
Do we have a responsibility as World citizens to the health and well being of all or only those lucky enough to live in the privileged part of the globe?
What is lacking mostly is the infrastructure to encourage or force our global conscience.
The lack of action in addressing this very urgent issue undoubtedly will affect all of us.
The health and well being of all our families is in jeopardy as long as another family is denied treatment for sleeping sickness, malaria, AIDS and the many serious diseases that are as yet untreatable because efficacious and affordable drugs do not exist. A salient point!
After Mary's keynote address we, the lucky ones, were addressed with very interesting speakers outlining medicine policy in the USA and the UK.
A debate opened the Conference at which the sustainability and issues around the PBS system were covered from a variety of observations.
It is evident that we in Australia have a very effective and equitable system of drug and health services supply.
It is, if not the best then very close to the best in the World despite some issues that are contentious in the public arena from time to time.
And it is very expensive and uncapped public expenditure.
It is up to all of us as citizens to value and care for such a system and as health professionals to ensure that we, Australians, are getting the best for our buck.
To do this we need a social conscience, as not everything we want as ideal is affordable or desirable for the best and fairest outcomes.
I believe this must reflect social and health outcomes and independent research must continue to provide the evidence needed on which to base QUM.

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