More than 50 per cent of medicines prescribed to patients are not taken as directed, a pharmaceutical conference was told yesterday.
Many people distrust the drugs and need to be convinced of their benefits, according to Mr David Dickinson, a UK-based consumer expert.
In the case of antibiotics even higher numbers of people take the medication incorrectly or fail to finish the course, Mr Dickinson told the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association (IPHA). "We are generally talking about long-term medicine for chronic conditions such as asthma, but the problems with antibiotics is even bigger."
The former editor of Health Which?, published by the British Consumers' Association, said one study found that almost one in five of the people who had kidney transplants, who need immuno-suppressant drugs, were failing to take their medication properly. "That staggered me. These people will die if they do not take their medication".
There is a "deep distrust" about drugs, he said. Consumers needed to be convinced that it was in their benefit to take them.
Forty per cent of British adults, he said, needed help to read official documents explaining about the medication and saw side-effects and drug allergies as the same thing.
"As far as the consumer is concerned a medication is not just a tablet, it is a combination of chemicals and information. They are not really interested in the chemical formulae. What will convince them to take it is the information passed on. What is needed is effective communication."
The IPHA president, Mr Michael Dempsey, told the conference that nine of the 10 top pharmaceutical companies had manufacturing plants in Ireland and employed more than 12,000 people. This had generated £6 billion in exports this year.
He pointed out that pharmaceuticals still only accounted for just over one-tenth of health expenditure in Ireland. "Contrary to what some commentators lead us to believe, we are not a nation of high consumers of medicine".
Irish households spent more on sweets and chocolate than on prescription medicines. Ireland had the second-lowest consumption of medicines per head in Europe.
"The industry provides the nation's medicines to the GMS at a cost of just 32p per day. The daily cost of a life-saving treatment for patients with heart disease is less than that of a daily newspaper."