URGENT Appeal to People Who Have Suffered Adverse Effects of the Pain Killer NOLOTIL

In December last year, Spanish medical translator and teacher, Cristina Garcia Del Campo, began a selfless campaign to bring about awareness of the possible dangers to Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians, of taking Nolotil, a painkilling drug that has been banned in around 30 countries worldwide. (Read the original article here).

After 6 months of constant lobbying and gathering of evidence, The AEMPS (Spanish Agency of Medicines and Medical Devices), which is the highest health authority in Spain, have finally become involved and have asked Cristina to travel to Madrid for an important meeting. This could, at last, mean that the “recommendations” that this drug is not prescribed to a percentage of the world population, who may have serious adverse effects, resulting, in some cases, in death, becomes an actual ban.

AEMPS is the organisation that decides which medicines are authorised (or not) for public consumption. There is no higher authority in Spain and they, and they alone, have the power to authorise or ban medicines.

Whilst Cristina has had a huge success in getting the whole of the Denia Health Department, (which includes several hospitals and many medical centres) to stop prescribing Nolotil/Metamizol to Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians, still more work is needed to convince AEMPS to do the same.

Since the AEMPS would not issue any statements or give instructions for doctors to stop prescribing Metamizol, she decided to phone hospitals all over the country, one by one, to inform them about the dangers of Nolotil/Metamizol on British people and to try to have them follow in the footsteps of the Denia H.A. but there are far too many and doing this in her spare time was a mammoth task and although the hospital doctors listened and were shocked to hear about these dangers, they can do nothing until ordered by AEMPS.

And so the only way forward was to go directly to the top and send AEMPS her research information. This was done and it now appears that they wish to listen to Cristina. The meeting will be held soon in Madrid, in the AEMPS Headquarters, with 3 people: the Head of Pharmacovigilance for the whole of Spain, the person in charge of the analysing of adverse effects, and the person in charge of communication, who issues official statements, etc.

So now, if she can manage to get them to understand and accept what is happening, they will do something about it. In order to do this, she needs to take as many case histories with her because their decision will be based on this evidence. “No cases must be missed or left unnotified”, she said.

This is probably the one and only opportunity Cristina will have to make things actually happen, there will be no other opportunities, as she cannot go any higher than this, apart perhaps from going to Europe, and by the time she gets through the red tape there, many more people will have suffered or even died.

Cristina now pleads for people, including those who have made contact but never submitted their individual cases to her, to e-mail their cases to [email protected]. This is the information she needs:

Full name – Gender – Age – Medical Card No. – Nationality – Name of Medication – Method (oral, intravenously) – Place and Province where you were prescribed this medication – Date you started and finished taking it – Reason for Prescription – Date your Adverse Effects began and finished – Description of Adverse Effects and Outcome (resolved, resolved with after effects, death…) – Did you have to be hospitalised or stay in hospital longer because of it?

“Please, it is extremely important for everyone to e-mail their cases to me with all the information required because I don’t have time to keep getting back to people for missing pieces of information. I need all cases in by 16^th June, the sooner the better, as I will need time to process them all. If the AEMPS decide not to do anything about this because they feel there aren’t enough cases, that’s it, this drug will continue to be given to you all and, even if you say you don’t want it, you will never be sure that you are not going to be given it”

She tried to get the AEMPS to pay for her expenses but they wouldn’t. Paul, from MOO restaurant will be organising events to try and raise some money so that her travelling expenses to Madrid for this meeting can be covered.