Sarah Carabott penned a humane story in today’s The Sunday Times of Malta (August 31, page 9) about the unnecessary tension and pain that sufferers from Multiple Sclerosis are having to go through as government is insisting that for the coming weeks they inject themselves with medicine that expired on August 31 saying that it is safe to do so.
My commentary in the same edition of the paper was also dedicated to this subject.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a nervous system disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. I need not go into the harsh effects on those suffering from the condition; suffice it to say that people having this condition are considered to be severely disabled.
One of the medicines used to control (not cure) the effects of Multiple Sclerosis is Extavia, an injection manufactured by Novartis that is self-administered by patients day in day out. It helps control MS but it has unpleasant side effects as well.
MS sufferers who went to the pharmacy of their choice to collect their supply of injections in the during the last few days were informed that the medicine was out of stock as the medicine they had expires at the end of August.
In the report mentioned above the Ministry of Health and Novartis informed the readers of The Sunday Times of Malta that there is no problem with using the Extavia batch currently supplied by government up to around the third week or so of September although the use by date on the batch was August 31.
I visited the website of Novartis to read the medication guide that the company gives to users of Extavia. The following sentence is the source of more tension and anguish to those suffering from MS:
“Do not use EXTAVIA after the expiration date shown on the blister pack label or box (Figure 1). If it has expired, return the entire pack to the pharmacy.”
Probably there is some technical explanation why the Novartis and Ministry of Health people said something to The Sunday Times of Malta while the Novartis website says something completely different. I say ‘probably’ as I want to do an act of faith in Novartis although the financial meltdown of some years ago taught us that corporate business is not to be trusted.
But let me take the Abrahamic way of hoping and trusting against hope and trust and say that Extavia can be used till Novartis and Government are saying that it could be used.
The point is that any MS sufferers being asked to inject him/herself with medicine after its use by date expired is being asked to make a much greater act of faith than I am making particularly so when Novartis clearly says in its website: “Do not use EXTAVIA after the expiration date.” This is not fair, nay, this is unjust.
This is more so since there are extra stocks of the medicine because someone, somewhere in the Ministry of Health got it wrong big time and ordered more stocks than he/she should have. It could be that this mess is the fault of the system more than an inefficient individual. But systems are designed by men and women.
MS sufferers should not have been made to pay the price for this mess.
PS. On a more positive note I would like to add a comment about Ms Rosanne Camilleri, the CEO of the Pharmacy of Your Choice scheme. I contacted her yesterday (August 30) about a question that arose concerning the present batch of Extavia in current use. Ms Camilleri immediately went into action. She made local and foreign contacts to get the necessary information. She kept us regularly informed of progress (or lack of progress) and kept on contacting people in Malta and abroad till she got the right answer. Her caring and efficient attitude deserves praise.