‘Give Alzheimer sufferers the proper medicine’

Labour MP Noel Farrugia has urged Minister of Health Joseph Cassar to categorically state when the proper medicine that should be prescribed to Malta’s 4,500 Alzheimer sufferers would substitute that currently being distributed under the Health...

Labour MP Noel Farrugia has urged Minister of Health Joseph Cassar to categorically state when the proper medicine that should be prescribed to Malta’s 4,500 Alzheimer sufferers would substitute that currently being distributed under the Health Department’s Schedule Five.

Speaking during the adjournment, Mr Farrugia said that five years ago, the Malta Medicine Authority had recommended that practitioners should not continue to prescribe to dementia sufferers the same medicine they subscribed to schizophrenics, because it had been found that this was shortening their life.

The local authority was consistent with the steps taken by the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency.

Mr Farrugia said that when a backbencher, Dr Cassar had himself recommended the same action. Despite his having been Minister for Health for over two years now, this change had not materialised. The government was still procuring the wrong medicine.

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