Ethical promotion

Posted on 20 April 2009

MeTA IAG member discusses ethical promotion of medicines.

After an International Advisory Group (IAG) Meeting in London on 8 April 2009, Dilip Shah, Secretary General of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance and member of the IAG spoke on film about MeTA and the role of transparency in the ethical promotion of medicines.

"Without transparency we will never address an issue squarely. Transparency is needed not only in pricing but also in what a medicine can do in terms of its clinical trials, in terms of claims which companies make about a medicine and put this data in the public domain.

"To give you an example of what transparency can achieve: for example, pain management, a simple drug like paracetamol is still far more cost effective and efficient than many of the new drugs which have come. But the industry never conveys this message and always promotes its new medicines for the sake of money.

"Now if transparency is brought in, these sorts of issues can be addressed very effectively and we can live with time-tested, safe, effective medicine" says Dilip Shah.
Watch the film here

IAG is not a governing board, rather members of the IAG support the national programmes by reviewing their work and identifying trends in the global market. They make recommendations to the MeTA Management Board, analyse lessons learned and suggest directions for MeTA’s second phase, after 2010. Membership is made up of representatives of the seven countries participating in MeTA’s pilot stage, the private sector, civil society and national and international aid organisations.