In Pakistan, Write 200 Scrips And You Get A Car

Depending upon the country in which you work, you may instead receive an air conditioner, a washing machine, a camera or a cow. Whatever one’s pleasure, drugmakers are targeting docs in developing countries with dinners and gifts as incentives to prescribe their meds, according to a new report from Consumers International, an umbrella organization of consumer groups.

The developing world, in other words, has become an easy target, and the CI report says self-regulation by drugmakers isn’t working, citing ads that would be considered misleading in Europe, as well as heavy promotion to docs, The Guardian reports. “Up to 50 percent of medicines in developing countries are inappropriately prescribed, dispensed or sold,” the report says.

Gifts include air conditioners, laptops, club membership, domestic cattle, foreign conferences at five-star hotels, brand new cars and school tuition fees, according to the report. Murad Khan, professor and chairman of the department of psychiatry at Aga Khan University, told researchers that in Pakistan “for writing 200 prescriptions of the company’s high priced drug, a doctor is rewarded with the down payment of a brand new car.” Which one? He doesn’t say, but the Alif goes for about $2,200 (see the photo).

CI’s member organisation in Pakistan, TheNetwork, surveyed doctors, sales reps and medical store personnel. In India, an unnamed doc told researchers: “‘Gifting’ of air conditioners, washing machines, microwaves, cameras, televisions, and expensive crystals is an accepted norm nowadays. So are frequent pampering in the form of CMEs [continuing medical education meetings] and lectures in star hotels followed by lavish dinners and cocktails.” Similar reports came from Venezuela, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Richard Lloyd, CI’s director general called for a ban on all gifts to doctors. “The pharma industry sees the developing world as a trillion-dollar opportunity to secure profits over the next 40 years. Weak regulation makes these markets an easy target for the marketing techniques of multinational drug companies, but consumer health expenditure in these countries can ill afford to be squandered on irrational drug use.”

The report is also critical of drug ads in developing countries which, it claims, sometimes promote a drug without mentioning the side effects or the restrictions on its use - for instance that it works in women but not men.

Regulatory authorities in developing countries are slow to protect people from drugs that have been banned or withdrawn in other countries. Vioxx for arthritis was officially banned in India in October 2004, the month after Merck withdrew it in the US, but it was still on sale in India the following year.

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations, the global trade group, says it would take time to get its code of conduct adopted everywhere. “I think it is not something that is achievable overnight,” spokesman Guy Willis tells the paper. “The issue is how do we get there.” But he challenged CI to lodge complaints where it had evidence of any breach of the IFPMA’s code of practice.

Source: The Guardian