A recently published book on pharma industry tried to expose the deceit behind many generic-drug manufacturing—and the consequent risks to global health. This publication is described as an ‘explosive narrative investigation of the generic drug boom that reveals fraud and life-threatening dangers on a global scale.’ However, I reckon, this is just a part of the story, and its huge adverse impact on public health flows generally from the following facts:
- Greater use of generic drugs is hailed as one of the most important public-health developments of the twenty-first century.
- Today, almost 90 percent of global pharma market, in volume terms, is comprised of generics.
- These are mostly manufactured in China and India.
- The drug regulators continuously assure patients and doctors that generic drugs are identical to their brand-name counterparts, just less expensive.
No question, such deceit, blatant fraud and data manipulation – seriously affecting drug quality of generic medicines, shake the very purpose of making affordable drugs accessible to many. But, simultaneously, lack of transparency – right across the various functions of a pharma business, is also making a host of modern life-saving drugs unaffordable and inaccessible to even more patients. Although, both are despicable acts, but the latter one is not discussed as much.
Thus, in this article, I shall dwell on the second one – how attempts for pharma business ‘transparency’ for expanded drug access to patients, getting repeatedly foiled, especially in light of what happened on May 28, 2019, in the 72nd World Health Assembly (WHA).
Does pharma want low business transparency to continue?
Despite so many encouraging initiatives being taken in the pharma industry over a period of time, gross lack of transparency in its business continues, since long, despite this is being a raging issue. The obvious question, therefore, remains: Does pharma want low business transparency to continue? Thus, to give a perspective to this pertinent point, I shall quote two important observations, appeared in ‘MIMS Today’ – the first one on April 17, 2017, and the other came a year before that, on November 20, 2016, as follows:
- “A market cannot function when purchasers have limited information and, in the case of prescription drugs, pricing is a black box. Prices for drugs are clearly rising at rates that far exceed inflation and the level of any rebates or discounts offered by manufacturers,” experts opined. They further said, to hold the industry accountable, Access to Medicine Foundation (AMF)’ regularly compiles an index to rank the progress made by each large drug maker in the area of business transparency. Curiously, they concluded, ‘the number and quality of evaluations for the effectiveness of these programs are lacking.’
- “Lack of transparency of drug makers was also identified. Their policy positions, political contributions, marketing activities and memberships in associations and the associated financial support provided and board seats held were all analyzed. And only then, the ‘AMF’ reached a consensus that transparency remains low in all areas. The analysts further added, ‘there is a lack of transparency and rigor in monitoring and evaluating the access-to-medicines initiatives as well as the link between prices and development costs. Thus, ‘greater transparency from manufacturers to disclose R&D costs for drugs and evaluation of the initiatives’ is imperative.
Despite key policy makers’ favoring transparency, it remains elusive:
To illustrate this point, let me draw a recent example from the United States.
Alex M. Azar II, who is currently the Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States, also served as president of Eli Lilly USA. LLC from 2012 to 2017 supports the need of business transparency in the pharma industry. Last year, he also emphasized:
“Putting patients in charge of this information is a key priority.…continue reading…
No comments:
Post a Comment