No one is immune from the publicity, not even the patients in the doctor’s waiting rooms. Consumers association UFC-What to Choose indicates a predominance of advertising among the documentation of general practitioners’ offices. Volunteers from the association led a vast investigation from 672 firms from mid-May to mid-July 2013, collecting nearly 3,500 prospectuses.
“Our investigators found leaflets in no less than 59% of the medical offices visited, with an average of 9 different documents per office. The analysis of these brochures underlines the influence of commercial interests in the documentation available to patients”, reveals UFC-Que Choisir. Among the brochures collected, only 40% come from institutional or associative actors, while 20% are published by pharmaceutical laboratories and 13% by the agro-food industry, underlines the association. Numerous advertisements for thermal establishments, personal service companies or for hygiene products are also present.
A hidden advertising vocation
What the UFC-Que Choisir mainly criticizes these brochures for is to hide an advertisement under the deceptive appearance of a health information document. According to their expertise, only 29% of commercial documents display their advertising vocation, while 71% of them hide it behind an apparent information mission. Laboratories in particular would thus find a means of circumventing the ban on advertising concerning reimbursable drugs.
For this reason, the association asks the Minister of Health “to take up the next Public Health Law to guarantee users the quality of the information made available in medical offices, by reserving it only to institutional actors. . “
