Pharmaceutical Executive-04-01-2002

Washington DC-In addition to launching an ad campaign backing adoption of a Medicare drug benefit, PhRMA is expanding its state lobbying efforts to block local prior authorization requirements. As more states face huge shortfalls in Medicaid budgets because of declining revenues and rising healthcare costs, they seek to cut spending on prescriptions. That means more restricted formularies and rebate requirements, with prior authorization imposed on doctors to limit prescribing of therapies that fail to offer sufficiently attractive deals.

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

As a chemist, a vice-president, and just about everything in between, Sarah Harrison has spent 25 years delivering business excellence and predicting the impact of radical changes in the healthcare environment. Now she leads AstraZeneca in its own multi-faceted transformation.

New markets are a pharmaceutical company's dream. And China, with a population of 1.3 billion-and new membership in the World Trade organization-could be the pharma industry's dream come true. The country's projected growth rate of 1.1 percent per year, which will increase its pharma market by at least $50 million annually, in addition to an increasingly prosperous population with a greater awareness of health-related issues, make the market extremely attractive. (See "People Power,")

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.

After months of stalemate between the White House and Senate democrats over the appointment of a new FDA commissioner, Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson took a shortcut February 26 and named Lester Crawford deputy commissioner. The move allowed Crawford to start work at FDA immediately, skipping the lengthy Senate confirmation process.

Ed Calesa knows women-or rather, he understands the female market. After starting his career as marketing research manager for Roche, he co-founded Health Learning Systems in 1971 and pioneered the use of continuing medical education as part of the healthcare promotional mix. There he developed and implemented two of the earliest and most successful initiatives targeting female baby boomers. Launched during the drive for women's liberation in the swingin' seventies, Calesa's campaigns helped open a dialogue between opinion leaders and women, addressing contraception and the use of formula for newborns. During nearly 20 years in that position, he gained an

Eli Lilly recently joined the growing list of pharma companies offering discount card programs for Medicare beneficiaries in an effort to "do something now" to help low-income seniors afford medicines. Although Lilly chairman Sidney Taurel voiced support for a broader drug benefit for the elderly-as do his pharma colleagues-he described the LillyAnswers program as "quick relief" while the Medicare-reform debate continues.

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.

The pharmaceutical industry stands in the crosshairs of federal and state law enforcement agencies. It is not being targeted by FDA for regulatory violations, as one would expect, but by many other government agencies

As proposals proliferate to establish a Medicare pharmacy benefit, the cost estimates continue to soar. The White House began in February by proposing to spend a measly $190 billion over ten years.

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.

Perseverance furthers. Those two unadorned words from the ancient I Ching were all that first entered my startled mind as I accepted the Oscar of business-to-business media-the Grand Neal Award.