Reactions from
Laboratories
| Laboratory |
Response |
| Alcon |
Yes, awaiting action... |
| Allergan |
No Answer |
| Novartis |
No Answer |
| Pfizer |
No Answer |
| Europhta |
No Answer |
| |
Alcon, recently bought by Novatis, which had not
replied our queries for quite some time (2006), just sent us this
letter -in French sorry - that gave us some hope regarding the progressive elimination of
preservatives in ophthalmic preparations. Yet, the wording is quite
surprising.
In any case, let's congratulate Alcon for such sudden
change in policy so crucial for many chronic ophtalmic disesases.
Basically, for those who do not understand French, it states that they
want to ensure better treatments and tolerance of their products
(besides the will to listen to patients associations... ;-) . However,
more intriguing they state this very dubious sentence: "We use
preservatives in our multidose [containers], and we would like to
make available to the patients our products in single use vials.
HOWEVER, public authorities play an important role".
This new letter seems to indicate that if Alcon does
not produce preservative free drops, it's due to the medical regulating
authorities' policy. Oddly ours contacts with the French institutions
seemed to prove the opposite (that is they are in favour of single use
vials and are aware of the consequences of preservatives. Are they
talking about the EMEA in general? Anyway, it sounds like we have to
dissipate this "misunderstanding" since apparently everyone is in favour
of preservative free drops. If so, all we have to do is to put it in
practice. Let's not lose time and save sights.
Read our response in French:
Lire notre Réponse conservateurs pour Alcon
.PDF
Even if we are very critical of Alcon we recognise
that at least they bothered to answer, which is not the case of Allergan,
Pfizer and Novartis for instance.
This is what we call the 'Preservative Paradox!
Preserve
our Eyes, not our Drops!
▲
copyright ©
Keratos 2007
