The Green Party today called for more careful management of medicines and said that between 1990 and 2006 there were 286 deaths related to pharmaceuticals.
The party's health spokeswoman, Sue Kedgley, said she also had figures which showed that in the 2004-05 year, 16,789 patients were discharged witha diagnosis of an adverse effect from pharmaceutical medicines.
"These figures are very high, and we know they are just the tip of the iceberg because reporting of adverse reactions to medicines is voluntary, not mandatory," Ms Kedgley said.
"That's a huge number of New Zealanders suffering from an adverse reaction to drugs, or from medication error."
Ms Kedgley's figures came from written parliamentary questions to Health Minister Pete Hodgson.
She said many of the bad reactions and mistakes were likely to have been preventable, and an urgent nationwide strategy was needed.
"The fact is that pharmaceutical drugs can cause serious harm if they are wrongly prescribed, or if they interact with certain other drugs.
"We need much more careful medicines management."
The Government is considering introducing barcodes bracelets for patients, and their prescriptions would have the same barcode.
Staff would have to ensure the barcodes matches before giving them medicines.
The issue has been discussed since the case of an 82-year-old man whose death was hastened by being given another patient's medication at Auckland Hospital.
Ms Kedgley said she strongly supported electronic prescribing.
"Mandatory reporting and publication of adverse pharmaceutical events would also enable us to assess trends over time, and focus on hospitals which have particular problems in order to put reliable and effective systems in place," she said.
