Medicines for children, published in June 1999, was prepared under the direction of the Medicines Committee, a joint committee of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) and the Neonatal and Paediatric Pharmacist’s Group. The aim is to provide information on the drugs currently given to children for prescribers, dispensers, carers, families and children, health service managers, the Department of Health, and the courts. A secondary but equally important aim is to identify those recommended drugs that need to be subject to further clinical trials, or controlled use, or national surveillance.

An illustration of the need for such a formulary arose in 1990 when a number of Health Authorities averred that only licensed medicines should be prescribed, dispensed, and administered in their hospitals. Paediatricians wrote to the RCPCH (then the British Paediatric Association) expressing their concern. Managers are often not aware that the licence is not a licence to administer the medicine, it is a licence to sell …