Pharma and Health Care

In recent years, there are many disputes going between Pharma and Healthcare organisation which will have impact on the sick people. Effective and cheap health promoting activities are supported by industry because they are not patented and low-cost. As the result most affected are the sick, poverty-stricken and the minimum educated ones, free market successes appear to pose unsolvable challenges to justice in social public health.

The major factor is Advertising Drugs and Selling Sickness.

Public advertising gets increasingly powerful using aggressive direct-to-consumer marketing, payments to celebrities for appearing on TV shows and telling about their illnesses and cures, and sophisticated targeting of consumer groups that will then effectively lobby insurers and regulators for the industry’s causes A most remarkable tactic for expanding drug markets is “disease mongering,” i.e., trying to convince essentially well people that they are sick by medicalization of trivial conditions: for instance, defining abdominal discomfort as irritable bowel syndrome or normal aging as menopause and osteoporosis, inducing people to believe they need treatment. Psychosocial conditions are especially susceptible to framing by experts as medical conditions: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, social anxiety disorder, sexual dysfunction. Pharmaceutical companies use the Internet to access teachers and to influence their brokerage role to increase ADHD diagnosis and Ritalin usage. For concerned parents, a suggested response by Novartis to teachers is: “Make it clear to them that it is important for them — and their child — to understand and follow the doctor’s medical advice about medication.

The industry will oppose these changes, and with its current power and ties to political forces, a significant move towards correct directions is unlikely. Awareness, research and public education about the problem are necessary to foment sufficient political will for change. Transparency about potential risk of products should be an integral part of an ethical code of conduct in the industry. On the other hand, public health activists should learn from the industry the valuable techniques of marketing and quality control to better achieve an effective and just utilization of limited health care resources.