Know your meds! - Finland celebrates National Medicines Day on 6 November 2012
The National Medicines Day is a nationwide awareness-raising campaign for Finnish prescription drug patients and health care professionals. The National Medicines Day is celebrated for the first time on 6 November 2012 and this year's theme is "know your meds".
The key to successful drug treatment lies in understanding the properties of the medication, its effects and when, how and for how long to use it. The National Medicines Day was created to encourage prescription drug patients to pay more attention to their medication. A secondary goal is to encourage health care professionals to ask patients about their use of prescription drugs and to give advice.
The National Medicines Day is an initiative launched by Paula Risikko, Minister of Social Affairs and Health.
"Only a third of all prescription drug patients use their medication properly. Sometimes this is because patients have not been given enough information about their medication and how to use it. By launching the National Medicines Day we hope to make both prescription drug patients and health care professionals pay more attention to how prescription drugs should be used correctly", Risikko explains.
Pharmaceutical organisations and health care professionals working togetherHealth care authorities and pharmaceutical organisations have produced a common medicines policy for 2020. One of its objectives is for the parties to agree on the principles of medicines provision together in order to make pharmaceutical services more systematic in the long term. The policy also promotes and supports efforts to increase the effectiveness of drug treatments.
The National Medicines Day is celebrated across the country by events and public lectures on the correct use of prescription drugs. More detailed information about the events is available on the websites of the participating pharmaceutical and health care organisations.
The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health hopes to make the National Medicines Day an event arranged on a regular basis to promote the correct and safe use of prescription drugs. For more information about the 2012 National Medicines Day and the participating organisations, please visit www.laakehoidonpaiva.fi.
For more information, please contactUlla Närhi, Ministerial Adviser, Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, tel. +358 295 163 391
Katri Hämeen-Anttila, Development Manager, Finnish Medicines Agency, tel. +358 50 577 3075
Related topics Related links
Medicines Information Strategy (Fimea)