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Scathing Report On UK Health Care System Failings Calls For Big Changes

 
• By Vibha Sharma

A damning UK report makes uncomfortable reading about how thousands of women suffered avoidable harm from the anti-epileptic drug sodium valproate and two other medical interventions and how safety concerns raised were dismissed, overlooked and ignored.

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Report Found That Doctors Rejected Patient Concerns About Medicines Safety • Source: Shutterstock

An independent review of the UK’s medicines and medical devices safety framework has found the system to be astonishingly “disjointed, siloed, unresponsive and defensive” when it comes to addressing concerns patients have over treatments. It has failed to listen to their concerns and when, belatedly, it has decided to act it has too often “moved glacially.”

The review, chaired by Baroness Julia Cumberlege, found that the UK system, which includes drug and medical device companies and the regulators among others, failed to listen to repeated concerns that patients had raised over many years about three medical interventions – the

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