Pharma companies sell killer drugs

The Pharma companies are no saintly acts. They continue to play with the lives of people by selling fake drugs or banned drugs. In this endeavour doctors are big aid. What's else it the money which makes our honey to prescribe these bad drugs.

The Times of India writes (18 September 2009)

While the government is known for heavy-handed intervention where it does more harm than good, it is strangely loath to look into areas where its
influence is necessary. Take the question of regulating the tactics pharma companies use to get doctors to promote their medicines. While the US Department of Justice slapped a record $2.3 billion fine on pharma major Pfizer for drug marketing fraud, the Indian government has asserted that drug companies can self-regulate against giving unethical inducements to doctors. If the global experience with big pharma is any indication, stringent legislation is required to keep drug companies from essentially bribing doctors.

The Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI), whose members together account for nearly two-thirds of drug sales in the country, adopted a voluntary code designed to prevent companies from providing incentives like free meals, vacations and gifts to doctors to influence their prescribing behaviour. But a quarter of these companies or their subsidiaries have been penalised in the US for illegally promoting their drugs. The magnitude of fines imposed for new transgression has escalated over the years.

Yet cases of unethical marketing of drugs abound, even in countries with strict legislation to prevent such abuse. What are the chances that in the absence of such legislation and its enforcement, pharma companies will abide by vague declarations of self-regulation in India? India, along with other emerging economies, is a major market for these companies. IMS, an industry consultancy, forecasts that sales in the biggest emerging markets will hit $300 billion by 2017, equal to current sales in the top five European markets and America combined.

Given the costs of developing and producing medicines, there is a clear incentive for pharma majors to push doctors to prescribe their products. The absence of countervailing legislation will not only push up the cost of medicines for patients, it could lead to unnecessary and even harmful medicines being prescribed. There is enough evidence to suggest that Indian doctors routinely prescribe higher priced drugs when generics would do. Legislation to crack down on unethical marketing practices coupled with strict enforcement and stiff penalties is necessary. Just because public health care is poor in India and patients by and large bear the cost of their medicines themselves, is no reason for government to look the other way.