** Shanghai Rule of Law News.
Author |Wang Weiran.
Shanghai Rule of Law News, December 1, 2023
Version A02: Rule of Law Focus
The construction of a barrier-free environment is an important symbol of social progress, which reflects a city's humanistic care for special groups such as the disabled and the elderly, and helps to form a good atmosphere in the whole society that attaches importance to the protection of the rights and interests of special groups. On March 1 this year, the "Regulations on the Construction of Barrier-free Environment in Shanghai" (hereinafter referred to as the "Regulations") came into effect, pointing out that the construction of barrier-free environment refers to the relevant activities carried out to provide convenience and conditions for members of society who have barrier-free needs to independently and safely enter and exit buildings, use their ancillary facilities, access roads, take public transportation, obtain, use and exchange information, and obtain social services.
The elderly are taking more drugs, and getting the information they want from the dense drug instructions has become a "headache" for many elderly people. The need for age-appropriate transformation of drug instructions is extremely urgent. In addition, the convenience of the elderly and disabled groups who are away from home to use public facilities has also attracted widespread attention from the society. Since the beginning of this year, in response to the above problems, the Putuo District People's Procuratorate and the Hongkou District People's Procuratorate have filed relevant public interest lawsuits to help accelerate the construction process of barrier-free cities.
Package insert for the drug
How to make it more "good-looking".
In mid-October this year, the progress assessment meeting of the public interest litigation project of the procuratorate for the barrier-free transformation of drug instructions for the elderly was held in the Supreme People's Procuratorate, and the Putuo Procuratorate reported the relevant work through the ** connection.
Prosecutors from the Putuo Procuratorate visited a number of community pharmacies in the area under their jurisdiction to conduct investigations.
In February this year, in the process of pairing and co-building at the grassroots level, the Putuo Procuratorate received a report from Liu Haiqing, a representative of the District People's Congress and secretary of the general party branch of the Zhenxi No. 1 Neighborhood Committee: Because most of the drug instructions are too small, many elderly people have difficulty reading in the process of reading drug instructions. The prosecutor visited a number of communities in the jurisdiction and found that due to the large amount of content that needs to be indicated in the drug instructions, for the sake of cost control, drug manufacturers often print words on palm-sized paper, which makes it difficult for middle-aged and elderly people to identify, which in turn affects their access to information such as drug usage, dosage, and expiration date. During the investigation, some elderly people told prosecutors that they would take the drug directly according to their previous drug experience because they could not read the instructions clearly. However, even for the same type of drug, the specifications of drugs produced by different manufacturers are different, so the dosage and frequency of taking need to be adjusted according to the medication guidelines, and the behavior of "blind taking" by the elderly group may bring drug safety risks.
The "Regulations" clearly stipulate that the city encourages the producers and operators of food, drugs and other commodities to configure Braille, large characters, audio instructions, etc. on the external packaging of commodities to facilitate the use of members of society who have barrier-free needs;At the same time, it is clarified that the people's procuratorates shall conduct legal supervision of the construction of a barrier-free environment through litigation supervision, procuratorial suggestions, and support for prosecution. In order to promote the construction of a barrier-free society and make drug instructions "good-looking", in March this year, the Putuo Procuratorate held a public hearing on the public interest litigation prosecution on the "construction of barrier-free information exchange on drug packaging", and put forward a series of feasible measures from the aspects of relevant market entities to explore the information transformation of drug instructions, increase the allocation of magnifying glasses and other equipment for the elderly, and provide more refined services, and suggested that the administrative organs can prompt and guide industry associations to give full play to their value and help build an age-friendly society.
As of May, pharmaceutical companies have basically formed a "transformation path of adding electronic *** to the outer packaging of drugs, and users can obtain the electronic display of drug instructions by scanning ***, which is convenient to enlarge or shrink." At the same time, based on the pre-set voice broadcast function, you can listen to the content of the drug safety part by pressing the voice broadcast button, and effectively realize the barrier-free information transmission for the middle-aged and elderly groups and the visually impaired to read the drug instructions. In view of the difficulty of reading drug instructions for the elderly, some pharmacies are equipped with reading glasses and magnifying glasses and other equipment to standardize the responsibilities of resident pharmacists for medication tips, cooperate with community drug safety services, and improve the effect of age-appropriate transformation. There are also some e-commerce platforms that have promoted the "one-page plan" of product aging manuals.
The prosecutor of the Putuo Procuratorate discussed the ageing transformation of the drug instructions.
What is the effect of aging transformation of drug packaging and instructions?At the invitation of the Putuo Procuratorate, a number of middle-aged and elderly volunteers also came to experience the test version developed by the pharmaceutical company. Subsequently, the Putuo Procuratorate will collect feedback from more volunteers, cooperate with pharmaceutical companies to continue to improve and revise functions, further improve the readability of drug instructions, better play the role of public interest litigation prosecutors, and effectively activate the "encouraging" provisions to fulfill the legal supervision responsibilities of barrier-free environment construction. Yan Xu, assistant to the prosecutor, said: "In the process of handling the case, we use public participation to accept supervision throughout the whole process of feedback clues from people's congress deputies and volunteers, participation in hearings and news supervision, and with the help of public hearings, people's supervisors, and the volunteer platform of 'benefiting the public', we have widely listened to the opinions of all parties, which has aroused widespread concern in the society about the safety of drug use by the elderly group. ”
On October 31, the State Food and Drug Administration officially issued the "Pilot Work Plan for the Reform of Drug Instructions for the Elderly and Barrier-free", so far, how to make drug instructions more "good-looking" has a clear management standard. The plan clearly lists Shanghai as one of the pilot areas, and requires relevant entities to increase the font size of some projects, provide paper drug instructions (simplified version) and electronic drug instructions (full version) at the same time, and provide additional voice broadcast services and Braille information services to meet the drug needs of different groups.
Accessible toilets
How to make it more "easy to use".
In addition to facilitating access to information, the Regulations state that members of society with accessibility needs should be able to access buildings and their ancillary facilities independently and safely. From February to May this year, the public interest litigation prosecutor case handling team of the Putuo Procuratorate visited and investigated the streets of the jurisdiction many times, and found that some barrier-free toilets have two long-term problems due to poor maintenance - one is that the side (left) of the barrier-free toilet toilet in some public toilets is 1 highThe 4m vertical grab bar is shaking and looseningThe second is that the barrier-free toilet call button of some public toilets is not in good contact, and there is no sound when pressed many times. The above problems affect the normal use of barrier-free toilets by special groups such as the disabled and the elderly, and harm the public interest. The procurator's case-handling team that undertook the case believes that the relevant administrative departments have the duty to supervise and urge those responsible for the management of barrier-free facilities, strengthen the daily inspection of barrier-free facilities and perform maintenance and management responsibilities, ensure the normal use of barrier-free facilities, and have the power to impose administrative penalties on unauthorized occupation of barrier-free facilities. Currently, the 11 problematic accessible toilets have been updated with grippers and call buttons.
In addition, the reporter also learned that there are 2 disabled people in Hongkou DistrictThere are more than 70,000 people, and a representative of the disabled once told the public welfare prosecutor: "Everywhere I go, the most fearful thing is that it is inconvenient to go to the toilet." This year, the Hongkou Procuratorate also vigorously promoted public interest litigation for barrier-free toilet renovation, and wrote a detailed investigation analysis report for common problems such as the occupation of facilities, poor management and maintenance, incomplete and unreasonable supporting measures, and invited relevant experts from the Shanghai Disabled Persons' Federation to conduct arguments to further clarify the renovation standards. In the first five months of this year, the Hongkou Procuratorate urged a total of 46 barrier-free toilets to improve their internal supporting facilities, adding rescue call devices, safety handles, low-level coat hooks, multi-functional tables, etc. According to the public interest prosecutor: "Rectification is not the goal, the goal is to do a good job of acceptance, constantly improve the construction and management of barrier-free facilities, and optimize and improve the functions of facilities." Before the formal acceptance, the relevant departments can carry out the pilot of the trial experience of barrier-free facilities, which represents the high importance of barrier-free construction and has reached a social consensus. ”
Since September 1 this year, in order to strengthen the construction of a barrier-free environment and ensure that the disabled, the elderly or other groups with barrier-free needs can participate in and integrate social life equally, fully and conveniently, the "Law of the People's Republic of China on the Construction of a Barrier-free Environment" has been implemented, marking that the daily needs of special groups for a barrier-free environment have a legal guarantee. For public interest litigation prosecutors, the current barrier-free environment construction has changed from "whether it is good or not" to "whether it is good or not" and "whether it works", and in the future, a more complete barrier-free facility system will be established, and the temperature of urban humanistic care will also benefit more groups.