Salud y Fármacos is an international non-profit organization that promotes access and the appropriate use of pharmaceuticals among the Spanish-speaking population.
Salud y Fármacos is an international non-profit organization that promotes access and the appropriate use of pharmaceuticals among the Spanish-speaking population.
In April 1997, during the First International Conference for Improving Use of Medicines (ICIUM) in Chiang Mai, Thailand, there was a meeting of Hispanic presenters to discuss the possibility of creating a system of communication among health professionals interested in promoting the appropriate use of pharmaceuticals in Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries.
It was determined that the best method of communication would be an electronic bulletin, and Núria Homedes and Antonio Ugalde offered to edit the publication. The first Boletín Fármacos was published in 1998 using the Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC http://lanic.utexas.edu/) at the University of Texas-Austin. Subsequently, the Boletín opened its own web space, at first under the boletinfarmacos.org domain and now at this website.
In 2003, an agreement was reached with the Borja Institute of Bioethics (Instituto Borja de Bioética), Barcelona, Spain, to co-edit the Bulletin. In 2005, the International Society of Drug Bulletins (ISDB) accepted the Boletín Fármacos as a full member. The International Society of Drug Bulletins (ISDB) is a worldwide network of bulletins and journals on drugs and therapeutics that are financially and intellectually independent of pharmaceutical industry. It was founded in 1986, with the support of the WHO Regional Office for Europe. You can find more information at https://www.isdbweb.org/
Also in 2005, we established a non-profit organization that would be responsible for the publication of the bulletin and would promote research and education on the appropriate use of medications. Salud y Fármacos was incorporated in the State of Texas as a 501(c)(3), a charity. The Bulletin became one of its activities. Between 2013 and 2015 the Spanish Foundation Salud y Fármacos took over the responsibility for publishing the bulletin. The information published in the bulletin is not subject to copyrights, any organization can reproduce our materials citing the source of the original publication.
Two issues of Boletín Fármacos were published in the first two years, three in the year 2000, and four in 2001. Five issues per year were published during 2003-2009, and in 2010 we decided to produce four numbers per year. The Bulletin is published on the last day of February, May, August, and November.
In 2015, recognizing the different audiences, we divided the original bulletin in four different volumes: Pharmacovigilance and Appropriate Use; Access and Economics; Ethics, Law and Clinical Trials; and Regulatory Agencies and Policies. Since 2019, The bulletin on Pharmacovigilance and Appropriate Use has been split in two (one called Pharmacovigilance and the other Appropriate Use of Pharmaceuticals), and the Bulletin on Ethics, Law and Clinical Trials has also been divided in two: one to cover Clinical Trials and the other Ethics and Law.
Salud y Farmacos has permits to translate from (in alphabetical order) Knowledge Network for Innovation and Access to Medicines del Graduate Institute de Ginebra, PharmedOut, Prescrire International, Public Citizen, Public Eye, South Centre, Therapeutics Initiative and Worst Pills Best Pills.
The information published in the bulletin is not subject to copyrights, any organization can reproduce our materials citing the source of the original publication. Boletín Fármacos’ original contents are distributed under a Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.
