Self-medication should be the rule,not the exception

摘要

All medicines should be available over the counter unless there are good reasons to restrict them to prescription supply,according to the the president of the International Alliance of Patients' Organizations.Albert van der Zeijden told the AESGP meeting last week that a central principle of IAPO is that people should be free to make their own health choices."This freedom of choice means that all medicines should be available as self-care medicines," he said."The only acceptable restriction is that my freedom should not be a threat to the freedom of choice of other citi-zens."This meant that Mr van der Zeijden accepted that antibiotics should not be freely available because of the public health risk that this posed.