Closer health checks sought

WELLINGTON - Better monitoring of the risks linked with third-generation contraceptive pills might have prevented some deaths in the past 10 years, says women's health campaigner Sandra Coney.

An Otago University and Ministry of Health study, published in the medical journal the Lancet, found that 20 women on the pill had died from blood clots in the lungs in one decade.

Ms Coney, the executive director of Women's Health Action, said the Government needed to put more money into monitoring adverse reactions to the pills.

"We might have saved some lives if this information had been available to the ministry earlier," she said.

"The reporting system that we have got, which is seriously underfunded by the Ministry of Health, has not been able to pick up an accurate level of these events in women and these deaths."

She said what was needed was intensive monitoring, a compulsory system which involved doctors and hospitals reporting every adverse reaction.

Ms Coney had raised the issue with the ministry, but had been told the monitoring would be too costly. "I think it's completely unacceptable."

She said women deserved the extra care in spite of the expense.

Professor David Skegg of Otago University, whose field is preventive and social medicine, said 17 women died of blood clots in the lungs (pulmonary embolism) between 1990 and August 1998. A further three had died by 1999.

The study also found that, for every 100,000 women taking oral contraceptives, one would die each year from a blood clot in the veins. (A report in the Weekend Herald incorrectly gave this figure as one in 10,000.)

Blood clots are associated with second- and third-generation oral contraceptives.

Ms Coney said that from a population perspective, one death a year was not a lot, but "from the perspective of the family of the woman who is dead, it doesn't feel minor."

She urged the Ministry of Health to step up its advice to doctors about prescribing the third-generation pills.

The Medicines Adverse Reactions Committee said doctors were being alerted to the research and publicity would be stepped up.

- NZPA