[Charter of medicines promotion and rational use by physicians]

The charter of medicines promotion recently adopted by France intends to constrain information given by sales representatives to the field of good prescription practices. Over a 11 year period (1994 to end 2004), 362 interdictions of promotional supports have been decided by the director of the French Medicines Agency. This accounts for 0.5% of the about 80 800 promotional supports controlled during this period. A date base shows the representation of the justifications of these interdictions and the predominance of documentation given or showed to the physicians. A challenge for health authorities would be to assess the actual impact of ethical and non ethical promotion.