Kevin Gopal

Canberra, Australia-The Australian Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association has denounced calls from the country's media and some of its doctors to drastically curtail drug promotion. APMA chief executive Alan Evans says any such move would severely affect the healthcare of millions of people in Australia and could even result in premature death.

London, UK - According to the magazine Health Which?, patients fail to receive full information about the efficacy and safety of antidepressants, including the risks of withdrawal and suicidal behavior.

More than a fifth of the people in the European Union are age 16 or under, yet at least half of the medicines in use there have not been tested on children. As a result, the region suffers from a lack of information about the safety and efficacy of pediatric medicines and of off-label pediatric use that medical experts say could cause adverse effects and even death.

GSK Faces Bribe Charges, Changing of the Guard

Capetown-In March, ruling on a case initiated by the Treatment Action Campaign, Save Our Babies, and the Children's Rights Centre, Judge Chris Botha ordered the South African government to provide the anti-retroviral nevirapine to all HIV-positive pregnant women.

A new report by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) scotches the myth that the most effective forms of malaria treatment are too expensive for East African countries.

Brussels, Belgium-Tackling communicable diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis and making pregnancy and childbirth safer are priorities for the restructured Afghan health ministry, according to World Health Organization officials.

GSK in Hot Water

Pfizer's $20 million donation of the long-acting antibiotic Zithromax (azithromycin), which is effective against trachoma with a single annual oral dose, has propelled the worldwide effort against the disease into its second phase

t a January meeting in Geneva, the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (GFATM)-set up last year by an alliance of private donors, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), foundations, national governments, and intergovernmental organizations-elected its directors, announced its funding criteria, and approved its first call for funding proposals.

Ireland-After its share price collapsed in the wake of the Enron scandal and growing concern about shady accounting practices, Elan said it would "vigorously defend" itself against allegations that it violated US federal securities laws.

In July, after a wide-ranging review of pharmaceutical legislation, the EC determined that the current ban on direct-to- consumer advertising should be balanced by a pilot system aimed to "ensure the availability of better, clear, and reliable information on authorized pharmaceuticals." It said the pilot should apply to diabetes, AIDS, and asthma products, citing the strong public demand for such information and the ease of monitoring the results of a five-year pilot study for those products.

Washington DC-Abbott Labs and Bayer made Multinational Monitor's 2001 list of the ten worst corporations. The Washington-based magazine was founded by consumer activist and one-time US presidential hopeful Ralph Nader.

Geneva-The pharma industry has given a guarded welcome to a World Health Organization report that explicitly links poverty and poor health.

For once, health activists and the pharma industry both welcomed a World Trade Organization declaration on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and public health, but there is little doubt that it opens the way to further compulsory licensing and parallel imports.

Medical experts around the world warn that inappropriate use of Cipro (ciproflaxin) is only one aspect of the growing problem of bacterial resistance to treatment.

Geneva, Switzerland-A Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) report claiming there is virtually no research into diseases that predominantly affect the poor is distorted and politically motivated, says Dr. Harvey Bale, director-general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations (IFPMA). He claims that medicines do exist to treat most of the more dangerous diseases affecting poor people, but in many cases they do not reach patients for reasons that are beyond control of the pharmaceutical industry.

Johannesburg, South Africa-GlaxoSmithKline announced in October that it had licensed Aspen Pharmacare to manufacture three AIDS products: Retrovir-AZT (zidovudine), Epivir-3TC (lamivudine), and Combivir (zidovudine/lamivudine). The products can be distributed only to the public, including the government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and charitable bodies accredited by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Tokyo, Japan-European pharma industry leaders have called for the opening of the Japanese market through measures to promote greater innovation there. The demand followed a European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations' visit to Japan led by EFPIA president Jean-Frany}ois Dehecq, chairman and CEO of Sanofi-Synthelabo.

Brussels, Belgium-Pfizer believes the dual pricing system it introduced in Spain complies with Spanish and European Union competition laws, but the European Commission isn't so sure. Competition policy commissioner Mario Monti says the EC will scrutinize Pfizer's pricing policy, which is intended to prevent parallel trade out of low-cost Spain.

London, UK-Insurance companies will be unable to use genetic test results to approve or deny claims for at least the next five years, following a new agreement between the British government and the Association of British Insurers. The move ensures that people can still get insurance coverage whether or not they have had a test.

York, UK-Pharma companies have failed to prevent product counterfeiting, and experts warn that the industry-wide security body has no coordinated approach to help.

The September 11 attacks on the United States caused pharma shares to fall along with others, but as investors switched to safe stocks, considered less susceptible to cyclical consumer trends, they rebounded. On September 12, broker WestLB Panmure raised its recommendation of the pharma sector from "neutral" to "outperform," favoring Sanofi-Synthelabo, Novo-Nordisk, Shire Pharmaceuticals, and GSK.

Rio de Janeiro-The Brazilian health ministry will use its $35 million a year in savings on Roche’s newly discounted AIDS therapy to fund a program aimed at providing non-AIDS medicines to low-income families.

Lagos, Nigeria-FDA refused to confirm or deny that it was launching a criminal investigation into Pfizer’s conduct during a 1996 clinical trial for Trovan (alatrofloxacin) in Nigerian patients.

Basel-A series of product approvals in recent weeks could go some way to compensate for setbacks in Novartis’ pipeline. The approvals came as the Swiss company reported healthy half-year figures and an 11 percent sales increase.

London-European cancer patients are losing out because current processes for reviewing treatments are "dire," says the Cancer Research Campaign.

Mumbai, India—The controversy over pharma companies’ incentives to pharmacists in India highlights just how competitive the Indian pharma industry has become.

London-Schering and Biogen have both expressed anger over the leak of a National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) document suggesting that doctors stop prescribing beta-interferon to new multiple sclerosis (MS) patients.

London-Following a review of its own drug discovery capabilities, GlaxoSmithKline practically gave away its majority stake in Affymax to a group of venture capitalists led by Patricof.