A federal Conservative MP whose 15-year-old daughter collapsed and died after taking a prescription medication will this week introduce a private member's motion calling for an arm's length drug safety agency.
Vanessa Young died in a hospital in Hamilton, Ont., in March 2000. Her father, Oakville MP Terence Young, believes a medication called Prepulsid or cisapride prescribed by their family doctor contributed to her death.
"She jumped up to go upstairs and fell down in front of me," Young recalled on CBC Radio's Metro Morning on Monday. "Her heart stopped dead."
At the hospital, doctors repeatedly asked the family who prescribed the drug. It was given to Vanessa to treat her mild form of bulimia, which sometimes caused her to feel bloated after eating.
As one of the doctors left the hospital the next day after Vanessa died, Young asked the doctor about the drug. The doctor's response — "Well, they dish it out like water" — led Young to start investigating adverse drug reactions.
Adverse reactions cause 10,000 deaths a year in Canadian hospitals when drugs are used as prescribed, Young said. Probably another 10,000 deaths occur outside of hospitals from prescribing errors and adverse reactions, he added, noting less than one per cent of reactions get reported.
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