Tri-Service

MoD Could Face Civil Claims Over Drug Given To Troops

The Ministry of Defence has been strongly criticised over the way it gave a controversial anti-malarial drug to troops, despite concerns over severe side effects.

The Commons Defence Committee said Lariam should be the “drug of last resort” for UK troops after finding evidence some were adversely affected by it.

It has been prescribed to more than 17,000 service personnel between April 2007 and March 2015, although it is not the main anti-malarial drug used by the military.

Between 1st April 2007 and 1st November 2014, 311,060 people served as regulars in the Armed Forces (not including reservists).

MPs said there was “strong anecdotal evidence” that the stringent conditions set out by the manufacturers for using Lariam had been ignored by the armed forces.

And it's now been reported that the MoD could face hundreds of legal claims from soldiers whose lives were affected by the drug, which was first prescribed in the early nineties.

The drug is associated with an increased risk of psychosis and anxiety reactions in a minority of users, with the committee finding anecdotal evidence that a number of current and former personnel had suffered.

It also found that support for the soldiers suffering from side-effects was "inadequate".

However, the MoD hinted that it would continue to use the drug, it said: "The vast majority of deployed personnel already receive alternatives to Lariam and, where it is used, we require it to be prescribed after an individual risk assessment."

"We have a duty to protect our personnel from malaria and we welcome the committee’s conclusion that, in some cases, Lariam will be the most effective way of doing that."

The manufacturer of the drug, Roche, had issued "clear guidance" that individual risk assessments should be conducted before prescribing Lariam but MPs said the MoD hadn’t conducted face-to-face interviews and had instead made assessments using medical records.

The confidence in the drug was so low that it found some personnel apparently preferred to throw it away and run the risk of contracting malaria rather than take Lariam.

Forces TV's Shirley Swain put the concerns over Lariam to the Surgeon General of the Armed Forces, Surgeon Vice Admiral Alasdair Walker (see below).

The chair of the Commons Defence Committee, Dr Julian Lewis MP, said:

"It seems quite clear that not only is the MoD unable to follow the manufacturer's guidelines for prescribing the drug in all instances, but a number of troops discard their Lariam rather than risk its potentially dangerous side-effects."

"It is our firm conclusion that there is neither the need, nor any justification for continuing to issue this medication to Service personnel unless they can be individually assessed, in accordance with the manufacturers’ requirements. And–most of the time–that is simply impossible, when a sudden, mass deployment of hundreds of troops is necessary."

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease which causes fever, headaches, vomiting and diarrhoea and can be fatal.

It killed around 438,000 people last year and there were 214m cases of the disease, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, according to World Health Organization estimates.