• HIV Drugs in Ontario: Who, How and Why?
• Involvement of prisoners in Policy Making
• Formulary Series: Manitoba
• Update on CROI: Research is Good, Interventions are Better
• Towards Equity: Catastrophic Drug Coverage in Canada

Having identified community-driven post-approval drug surveillance as one of its goals, CTAC chose to bring a community-based research approach to the issues of Post Approval Surveillance System (PASS) the system tracking adverse drug events after the drug goes to market.

How We Came To This PASS: the current post-approval surveillance system in Canada (.PDF) (Background fact sheet).

Click here to download the first issue of CTAC's Hepatitis and HIV Co-infection E-news.

According to Sonya Audy (2005), six conditions must be met before
obtaining the free and informed consent of clinical trail participants.

What does someone who is asked to participate in a clinical trial need to know before signing on?

This is not a decision to be taken lightly, but only after a period of reflection. The person needs to take his time and also take the time to consult someone else in order to better understand all of the issues.

He should receive a copy of all the documents, including the consent form, before signing and have the opportunity to consult someone with the documents in hand.

The Canadian Treatment Action Council firmly believes that
health information is for the public good and should not be
profit-driven. CTAC fully supports, in principle, the establishment of
educational programs, including those funded by industry, and
administered by a neutral third party. CTAC does not support any
relaxation of the current DTCA Regulations and is strongly opposed to
DTCA for medications used to treat HIV/AIDS or associated conditions.

David versus Goliath Revisited:
The Great Cross Border Internet Pharmacy Debacle

By Louise Binder, Chair, CTAC
Spring 2007

Well, it is déjà vu all over again. The American government has
returned to its favourite neo-colonial strategy to solve its high
domestic drug pricing problems: purchasing Canadian drug supplies
for a steal, so to speak.

You may recall that this was a serious problem just before the last
U.S. election. Internet pharmacies had set up shop in Canada and

The Canadian Treatment Action Council (CTAC) has been conducting
consultations on Catastrophic Drug Coverage in Canada. The
consultations were held in Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary
and Vancouver. The consultation was a two part process allowing for the
AIDS community and the Cross Disability community to formulate a
Catastrophic Drug Plan for Canada. If you would like to review
the informative PowerPoint used at these consultations please click
here.