Million Live Campaign

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) (IHI 2008) launched a national American campaign for improvement and five years after the IOM report Leape and Berwick summarise what has happened, analysed the reasons why improvement has not been greater, and made recommendations for what needs to be accomplished to realise the IOM s vision (Leape and Berwick 2005). After that IHI has launched a new campaign (5 Million lives) and added intervention targets as presented in Box 7.2(IHI 2008). The specific drug-related problems and interventions are market in bold and will be highlighted below. 

Drug-related problems can be defined as Any undesirable event experienced by the patient that involves or is suspected to involve drug therapy and that actually or potentially interferes with a desired patient outcome (Strand et al. 1990). This is a vital component of Pharmaceutical Care and Clinical Pharmacy and will be described more in detail in another chapter. It should however be noted that there are several definitions and classification systems for DRPs. A literature review (van Mil et al. 2004) identified fourteen classifications and their critical elements. In the presented definition a potential problem is a DRP but this is not the case in all definitions and classifications. This is also the case for unavoidable adverse drug reactions (e.g. with cytotoxic agents). 

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Preventive medicine through vaccination continues to be the most cost-effective public health practice, even with the drastic advance in modem medicine. Mass vaccination programs have eradicated smallpox from the earth. The World Health Organization (WHO) has a major campaign underway to eradicate polio by the year 2000. The development of vaccines has saved millions of lives and prevented many more from suffering. However, there are still many diseases without effective vaccines, such as malaria. With the recent emergence of antibiotic-resistance strains and exotic viruses, an effective vaccine development program becomes a top priority of public health policy. 

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