EVALUATION OF DRUG ADVERTISEMENTS MADE BY PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES AS PER WHO ETHICAL CRITERIA FOR MEDICINAL DRUG PROMOTION IN CHITWAN MEDICAL COLLEGE TEACHING HOSPITAL

Background: Large number of new drugs are introduced into the market everyday. Drug advertisements are used as a major marketing tool by the pharmaceutical companies to promote their new drugs. WHO has recommended the drug promotional advertisement criteria to make promotional more ethical and rational. So, the aim of this study was to evaluate the drug advertisements made by pharmaceutical companies as per WHO ethical criteria. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study of drug advertisements was carried out in the Department of Pharmacology at CMC. The drug advertisements were evaluated based on 11 criteria laid down by the WHO. The data was entered in Microsoft Office Excel software 2008 and exported to IBM SPSS 20.0 version software for further analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. Results: Total 185 drug advertisements were evaluated. Among them, most of them 66.40% were promoting single drug formulation. Antimicrobials 21.6% were the most commonly promoted group. Only 12.4% followed all the criteria as led down by WHO. Most of the drug advertisements have the brand name written with approved generic name, dose, manufacture name and dosage form. It was found that the most neglected part of drug advertisements was information related to drug interactions (12.40%) and side effects (14.10%). Conclusions: Majority of drug advertisements fulfilled only half of the WHO ethical criteria for medicinal drug promotion. This indicates that unethical drug promotional advertisement is wide spread which need concern of all health authority.