EDITORIAL: Ban on pharmaceutical freebies the way to go

The move by the Kenya Association of Pharmaceutical Industry (Kapi) to ban its members, who comprise local and international drug companies, from giving gifts in cash or kind to health practitioners is welcome.

This follows Kapi’s revision of its code of practice to restrict firms from influencing healthcare professionals. The new rules also stipulate that manufacturers are required to provide patients and the public with full information about their branded drugs.

Drug manufacturers have for long used gifts as inducement to sway doctors and pharmacists into only prescribing their own medicines to patients.

The practice is not only unethical, it is also unfair to patients who often place their trust in medical professionals’ expertise, expecting to be given only the best drugs.

Additionally, it skews the competition landscape among manufacturers because gifting eliminates fairness, especially to the detriment of firms that choose not to be involved in the malpractice. Past research has shown that the rate at which doctors prescribed brand name medicines went up when they were offered cash or gifts, including foreign trips and dinners by pharmaceutical companies. The effects of this is that the cost to patients and medical insurers are likely to shoot up given that brand name drugs usually cost a lot more than generic ones and other equally effective alternatives. The gifts may also be in the form of study grants, training and speaking fees. Analysts in other jurisdictions have gone further to raise alarm over big pharma’s involvement in medical research, saying that it can lend to distortions in scientific evidence and raise questions over objectivity of data.

It is important to note that the mandates of doctors and pharmaceutical firms differ: Doctors are primarily supposed to provide patient care while medicine firms are mostly geared towards commercial outcomes. While their differing roles in the health sector are bound to intersect, their priorities raise ethical issues and should not mix, hence the view that such firms should not gift doctors.

Going forward, Kapi should ensure that its fresh guidelines are implemented in order to restore public trust and rein in rogue doctors and companies that skew health services due to malpractices like giving inducements to doctors.