§ Mr. Carter-Jonesasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what is his Department's policy towards Braille indicators on medicine bottles and packs for blind patients; if he will encourage and support such Braille indicators; and if he will make a statement.
§ Sir George YoungIn consultation with the Royal National Institute for the Blind and the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, a range of Braille labels for medicines has been made freely available recently to general practice and hospital pharmacies by a manufacturer of medicinal products. I welcome this arrangement.
The range consists of seven labels carrying the most frequently used dosage instructions and a set of blank labels which can be embossed with other markings and may be attached by pharmacists to dispensed or purchased medicines. These Braille labels also contain the same instructions in clear, bold print as an aid to many of those with vision handicaps.
In addition to this arrangement, self-adhesive labels, suitable for marking in Braille, have been available for a number of years on order from the Royal National Institute for the Blind.
343WNot all blind persons, of course, can read Braille. They, and others with impaired sight, commonly devise their own systems of marking their medicine containers and other objects so that they can identify them by touch. For the purposes of promoting safety in relation to medicinal products, a wide range of liquid medicinal products for external use have to be supplied in fluted bottles to assist tactile identification.