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THE PHARMA REVIEW (JUNE 2008) |
Ethical Code of Conduct for
Drug Marketing |
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Pavan Malhotra, O. P. Gupta,
Shakti Bala, Archana Parihar |
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Abstract: Most of the
clinicians are aware that some pharmaceutical companies
make tall claims of therapeutic potency of their
products to survive in a highly competitive medical
market violating the ethical code of conduct and risking
the life of consumer. A tendency to provide one sided
information to the clinicians, only by giving the
optimistic view and not talking about the darker facts
i.e. adverse effects or drug interactions amounts to
jeopardizing the patient's life. The implementation of
ethical code of conduct will provide adequate safeguard
against the risk of therapeutic entity. Thus the main
objective of adopting ethics for drug promotion is to
ensure improvement in health care system.
Establishment of ethical criteria
WHO conference of experts on the “Rational use of
drugs”, held in Nairobi in 1985, prepared a revised drug
strategy which was endorsed by 39th World Health
Assembly in 1986 vide resolution No. WHA 39.27. Among
other components, this included ethical criteria to be
adopted for the drug promotion as an extension and
updating of ethical and scientific criteria of 21st
World Health Assembly in 1968 (WHA 21.41). The ethical
criterion desired to be adopted by different governments
as per the national circumstances, is for both
prescription and non-prescription (OTC) drugs and also
for traditional as well as any other product promoted as
a drug. This criterion when adopted by a Government
implicitly means its application through the drug
regulatory authority - FDA/Drug Controller, to
pharmaceutical companies and their offshoots -
advertising and marketing agencies, prescribing and
dispensing bodies and teaching professionals. The
criteria does not attract any legal obligation. It is up
to various governments to adopt legislation or other
measures as they may deem fit to make various agencies
falling under their control to adopt the said criteria.
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