Reflections and Lesson Learned: From Public Health Policy to Increasing Ethics in prescription and drug promotion Awareness

Abstract

Introduction: Public health policy issues on ending unethical drug promotion is very complex in terms of its concepts and its implications with the society. Despite the fact that there are various stakeholders, public discussions on the matters have yielded no observable diversity in resolutions resulted. It seems that propelling this policy into practice might be successful but what exactly are the conditions or the provisos that have made bringing the policy into practice so difficult and complicated? Methods: This is a qualitative study through collecting data from reviewing related documents, conducting content analysis as well as thematic analysis. The data collected are then exchanged and presented to specialists between September to October 2014. Results: It is found that drug promotion can result in conflict of interests because professional autonomy of medicine providers and prescribers can be lessened substantially. As the ethical criteria in prescription and drug promotion is still low and weakly enforced, cooperation and participation from related individuals are weakened as well. When reviewing the processes of public health policy making, participation and perception from all stakeholders are still very lacking. There has also been a use of external procedures to negotiate and reap the benefits from opponents of the policy. This proves to be a great obstacle that makes implementing the public health policy even more complicated and uncooperative. Conclusion: To make ethical in prescription and drug promotion practical and consequential, this study uses the findings from failure factors to make policy suggestions, namely, to conduct and present findings in terms of Transparency Perceptions Index regarding the Drug Promotion in order to promote and encourage ethical in prescription and drug promotion and enhance good governance within drug system in Thailand