Australian Prescriber has been thrown a lifeline after the Federal Government said it would offer a contract to a new publisher to keep the medical journal running.  

Its fate had been uncertain ever since the decision earlier this year to axe $25 million in annual taxpayer funding for NPS MedicineWise.  

A petition, launched by the journal’s editorial board and signed by more than 8000 people, had urged the Minister for Health Mark Butler to support the journal’s ongoing publication.  

It said “a generation of health professionals has grown up with the journal”, which refused to accept pharmaceutical industry funding.