shocking

[drsundaram]

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shocking to know the study on the medical doctors degradation

 

[Maha52]

A lawless industry.... no check ... who will bell the cat..?

There's an unhealthy alliance between doctors and pharma firms

The government has shown little interest to penalise pharma companies that offer sops to doctors to push their drugs

It’s a clear case of self-regulation gone wrong. That some pharmaceutical companies give expensive gifts, distribute cash and pay for extravagant pleasure trips of doctors willing to push their products, is no news. What’s alarming is that there is no law to punish those guilty of the unethical practice; and the government refuses to blink. Result: patients are forced to buy costly medicines.

Companies ramp up drug prices to recover the amount spent on promotion. It was, therefore, no surprise when on January 8, 2019, KC Ramamurthy, Congress MP from Karnataka, demanded in the Rajya Sabha a list of firms accused of bribing doctors and the action taken against them. The government’s response was ambiguous.

Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Ashwini Choubey said, “The Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) has received some complaints against some pharmaceutical companies on unethical marketing practices.” He conveniently ignored the first part of the question.

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McKinsey & Company, a US management consulting firm, states the Indian pharmaceuticals market is set to grow from $33 billion, according to India Brand Equity Foundation, to $55 billion by 2020 and become comparable with all developed markets other than the US, Japan and China. Small wonder, pharma firms completely ignore UCPMP and promote their products as a business. “The drug promoted the most becomes costliest,” says Chatterjee.

The gifts, however small, influence the physician, states a study conducted in 2013 by Roshni Narendran of the University of Wollongong, Australia, and M Narendranathan of the Kerala Institute of Medical Sciences, Thiruvananthapuram. When a physician listens to a drug salesperson and accepts gifts from the company, the doctor is under obligation to prescribe that drug, the study states.

An analysis by the Economic Times Intelligence Group shows 10 largest pharma firms had spent six per cent of their total sales between April 2003 and March 2004 on research and development. In contrast, these firms spent 290 per cent more on marketing.

Clearly, self-regulation has failed to police the interactions between the physician and the pharma firms. “We had given an alternate law which made regulatory obligations mandatory and not voluntary. It clearly gave penal provisions, from a fine of Rs 50,000 to Rs 20 lakhs and imprisonment depending upon the violation. If such measures are not adopted, this sector will never be regulated,” says Guha.

Read more at:

There's an unhealthy alliance between doctors and pharma firms

It’s a clear case of self-regulation gone wrong. That some pharmaceutical companies give expensive gifts, distribute cash and pay for extravagant pleasure trips

www.downtoearth.org.in

 

[Maha52]

Law to punish pharma firms that bribed doctors languishing since 2015

Please read more at:

Law to punish pharma firms that bribed doctors languishing since 2015 | India News - Times of India

India News: While Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently mocked doctors in a public interaction in London for going on foreign trips sponsored by pharma companies,.

timesofindia.indiatimes.com