�The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has given approval for a medicine to be made available from a pharmacist without a doctor's prescription to treat chlamydia. The zithromax pill, which will be called "Clamelle", will be available to buy by people 16 years and over if they have tested positive for the infection and have no symptoms, and for their sexual partners.
Dr June Raine, Director of Vigilance and Risk Management of Medicines at the MHRA said, "Chlamydia is the most uncouth sexually inherited disease in the UK. Up to 70% of people world Health Organization have chlamydia have no symptoms and could therefore remain undiagnosed. This means that they are at huge risk of exposure of life-threatening long-term health complications, including infertility and ectopic gestation. Today's move means that symptom - free people diagnosed with Chlamydia and their married person will be able to get convenient effective intervention from their local pharmacy.
"The MHRA is exquisite to support the availability of more medicines nonprescription (OTC), where it is safe to do so, and we wish to move on to new areas such as prevention and continuing disease management. We know many pharmacists are ready for this too. Making this medicinal drug available from a drugstore is a real model of how we are progressing, and enabling people to play an active role in taking charge of their own health care."
The medicine is expected to strike pharmacy shelves later this year.
Notes 1. Actavis UK Ltd is working in conjunction with the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) on grooming materials for pharmacists and launch plans for this medicine as well as a Clamelle-branded chlamydia examine kit.
2. Azithromycin is a generic medicine. However, only this branded mathematical product will be made available OTC from a druggist.
3. An approved standard test is when a diagnosis of chlamydia is confirmed by a research lab Nucleic Acid Amplification Technique (NAAT) essay, a simple urine test which detects the nucleic acid of the C. trachomatis bacterium. A NAAT test is the needed gold standard test for detecting chlamydial infection in men and women.
4. The MHRA is the government authority responsible for ensuring that medicines and medical devices work, and are acceptably safe. No product is risk-free. Underpinning all our work lie robust and fact-based judgements to secure that the benefits to patients and the public justify the risks. We keep watch over medicines and devices, and take any necessary action to protect the public promptly if there is a problem. We encourage everyone - the public and healthcare professionals as well as the industry - to tell us around any problems with a medicine or medical device, so that we lavatory investigate and take whatsoever necessary action.
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