Pharmaceutical Industry

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The Big Six

● Pfizer Inc
● Novartis International AG
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● Merck KGaA
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● Roche Holding AG
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● Sanofi SA
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● GlaxoSmithKline

Trade Organisations

See List of pharmacy organisations in the United KingdomWikipedia-W.svg

Aspen Pharmacare

Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd is a multinational South African holding company for pharmaceutical businesses, and the largest drug company in Africa. The group supplies medicines and products to 150+ countries.[1]

  • Jun.04.2020: Drugs firm boss banned from trade over NHS price fixing. In 2016, Amit Patel, through his firm Auden Mckenzie Holdings Ltd, brokered a deal between Aspen Pharmacare and privately-held Dutch company Tiofarma BV, leaving Aspen as the sole supplier of fludrocortisone tablets. Aspen then increased the price by 1,900%, which cost the NHS £30.9m over the 3 year deal, with Patel's company receiving 30% of Aspen’s increased profits in exchange for staying out of the market.

(Patel sold Auden Mckenzie Holdings Ltd to Actavis plc in 2015.; Actavis plc was renamed as Allergan plc in Mar.2015. In 2016, Allergan sold Actavis to Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd for $40.5bn.WP) Billy Kenber, The Times.

Essential Pharma Ltd

CH, EssentialPharma.co.uk, EssentialPharmaceuticals.com

  • Mar.14.2018: HSE to face questions over cost of soaring drug prices. The HSE is to be called before the Public Accounts Committee to outline the cost to the state of huge drug price increases after the USA drug-maker raised the price of essential epilepsy medication by more than 1,300%. Committee members also called yesterday on the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission and European Commission to investigate Essential Pharma over potential anti-competitive pricing activity. The Commission launched an inquiry into possible anti-competitive conditions in the pharmaceutical sector in 2008 and has begun separate probes into drug companies in recent years, including Aspen Pharmacare, which increased the cost of life-saving cancer treatment in Ireland by up to 600%. Peter O'Dwyer, The Times.
  • Mar.13.2018: Drugmaker raised price of epilepsy pill by 1,300% Essential Pharma, a USA company, increased the cost of essential epilepsy medicine ZarontinWikipedia-W.svg by more than 1,300% and sought price rises of up to 3,000% to maintain other drugs in the Irish market. Last year, Essential Pharma sought to push through price rises of 1,757.92%, 2,027.65% and 2,997.64% on other products during discussions with the HSE. Simon Harris said he believed the Irish Health Service had been “held to ransom” by pharmaceutical companies. Aspen Pharmacare, the South African pharmaceutical company, had increased the cost of lifesaving cancer drugs by up to 600% and warned the HSE of "severe stock shortages" if it refused to agree to its price demands. Despite the financial constraints at the time in 2012, the Health Executive felt that it had little choice but to pay up. Peter O'Dwyer, The Times.

Hikma Pharmaceuticals plc

Hikma, which was founded in 1978 and is based in Jordan, operates in 50+ countries.
Hikma’s biggest market is the USA since the acquisition of Roxane Laboratories in 2016 in a deal which included generic Advair.

  • Mar.16.2018: Drug delay sends Hikma into red. The US business has been struggling with increased competition as well as delays winning approval for its version of GlaxoSmithKline's blockbuster Advair asthma inhaler. The FDA withheld approval, meaning a launch could be delayed until 2020. Alex Ralph, The Times.

Laboratoires Servier

  • Jan.06.2018: France shaken by fresh scandal over weight-loss drug linked to deaths. A weight-loss drug, amphetamine derivative Mediator, believed to have killed hundreds of people in France's biggest pharmaceutical scandal has sparked fresh controversy as victims complain of delays in state compensation and a leading drug-company boss has been placed under formal investigation for manslaughter. Mediator was marketed to overweight diabetics but often prescribed to healthy women as an appetite suppressant when they wanted to lose a few pounds. According to the French Health Ministry, it has killed at least 500 people from heart-valve damage, but other studies put the death toll nearer to 2,000. Thousands more complain of cardiovascular complications that have limited their daily lives. As many as 5mn people were given the drug between 1976–Nov.2009, when it was withdrawn in France, years after being pulled in Spain and Italy. It was never authorised in the UK or US. The scandal, which has prompted the resignation of the head of France's public health agency, sparked a furore about drugs regulation and the lobbying power of pharmaceutical companies in France, which has one of Europe's highest levels of consumption of prescription drugs. One victim said: "what stuns me is the lack of support from the state, even psychological support. The victims are the ones who have to bear the consequences of this and we have been totally abandoned". Angelique Chrisafis, The Guardian.

Articles

  • Mar.31.2020: Indian Drug Companies Try To Gut Antibiotic Pollution Controls. Most of the world’s antibiotics are made in factories in India and China. These facilities leak waste containing antibiotic residue and drug-resistant bacteria into the environment. This pollution fuels the spread of so-called superbugs, micro-organisms that are resistant to antibiotics. The Indian Drug Manufacturers Association – which represents leading pharmaceutical companies – has attempted to push back on proposed regulations. Specifically, it has argued that the strict limits on pollution should instead be targets, and that large numbers of factories should be exempted from the rules. Andrew Wasley, Alexandra Heal, Madlen Davies, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
  • Jul.02.2020: India to ban antibiotic pollution from pharma factories. The Indian government is to limit the amount of antibiotic residue permitted in wastewater released by drug factories. A draft bill published on 23 January introduces limits on the concentrations of antibiotics found in the waste discharged by pharmaceutical factories into rivers and the surrounding environment. Madlen Davies, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
  • Sept.25.2018: How big pharma payments can hurt cancer patients. Before committing vulnerable patients to emptying their life savings, oncologists must provide the best possible advice. The oncology community is reeling from an extraordinary lapse of ethics and good governance in its midst. But what this sorry event has again underscored is that when it comes to the practice of medicine, what is indispensable is personal integrity. My favourite definition of integrity is what you do when no one is watching. When integrity slips, the casualty will be doctors and our patients, and the damage can be irreparable. Ranjana Srivastava, The Guardian.
  • May.06.2017: Big Pharma's pollution is creating deadly superbugs while the world looks the other way. Environmental standards do not feature in international regulations governing drug production. Industrial pollution from Indian pharmaceutical companies making medicines for nearly all the world’s major drug companies is fuelling the creation of deadly superbugs. Global health authorities have no regulations in place to stop this happening. A major study published today in the prestigious scientific journal Infection found “excessively high” levels of antibiotic and antifungal drug residue in water sources in and around a major drug production hub in the Indian city of Hyderabad, as well as high levels of bacteria and fungi resistant to those drugs. Scientists told the Bureau the quantities found meant they believe the drug residues must have originated from pharmaceutical factories. The presence of drug residues in the natural environment allows the microbes living there to build up resistance to the ingredients in the medicines that are supposed to kill them, turning them into what we call superbugs. The resistant microbes travel easily and have multiplied in huge numbers all over the world, creating a grave public health emergency that is already thought to kill hundreds of thousands of people a year. Global authorities like the USA's Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency strictly regulate drug supply chains in terms of drug safety - but environmental standards do not feature in their rulebook. Even the World Health Organisation (WHO) buys antibiotics from companies whose drug ingredients are made in Hyderabad without carrying out environmental checks. The international bodies say the govts of the countries where the drugs are made are the ones responsible for stopping pollution - but domestic legislation is having little impact. Around 170 companies making bulk drugs like antibiotics operate in and around Hyderabad, the majority clustered in sprawling industrial estates along the banks of the Musi river. Companies in Europe and the US, as well as health authorities like WHO and the UK’s NHS are reliant on drugs being produced in these factories. Last year India’s Supreme Court ordered the country’s pharmaceutical companies to operate a zero liquid waste policy, but “massive violations” have reportedly occurred. India has become the epicentre of the global drug resistance crisis, with 56,000 newborn Indian babies estimated to die each year from drug-resistant blood infections, and 70–90% of people who travel to India returning home with multi-drug-resistant bacteria in their gut. The amounts of antimicrobials found in the tests were “eye-wateringly high”, said Dr Mark Holmes, a microbiologist at the University of Cambridge. The pharmaceutical industry in Hyderabad produces “enormous amounts” of waste each day. MSN Pharmachem makes the raw ingredient of the antibiotic moxifloxacin on behalf of international drug companies Macleods and Sun Pharmaceuticals, which then turn it into a finished product supplied to the World Health Organisation. Aurobindo exports to more than 150 countries around the globe. Mylan products fill one out of every 13 prescriptions dispensed in America. Mylan also supplies the European Union market, and says it is the fourth biggest supplier of generic (non-branded) drugs in the UK. The European Public Health Alliance, an umbrella group for more than 90 non-profit organisations, lambasted the failure of international regulators to do anything about the “rife” pollution which was a “clear cause” of AMR. Madlen Davies, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
  • Oct.2017: Pills and profits: How drug companies make a killing out of public research. In this joint report, STOPAIDS and Global Justice Now show how taxpayers are funding £billions worth of research into life-changing drugs – only to be told they are too expensive when they need them. The public are paying twice, first for the research and then for the high cost of these medicines. The pharmaceutical industry has always claimed that high prices are down to high research and development costs. But the process for setting prices has been shrouded in secrecy. Our current model for researching and developing medicines is based on using patents as an incentive, which give companies exclusive rights to a new drug for 20 years or more. However, the high prices of medicines do not reflect the public contributions to health research. The UK is the 2nd largest govt funder of global health research and development (R&D), after the US. It is estimated that the public pays for two-thirds of all up front drug R&D costs. Yet, as highlighted by our new report Pills and Profits; how drug companies make a killing out of research, the NHS spent more than £1bn last year alone on medicines developed with significant reliance on UK public research funding. Here are 5 recommendations for the UK govt to safeguard access to publicly funded medicines: (see pdf report) ... Employees of pharmaceutical companies hold key positions in research councils such as the Medical Research Council, Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council, and the Council for Science & Technology. Two sub-groups within the Office for Life Sciences provide industry executives and lobbyists with direct access to ministers from the Department of Health, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, and key personnel from HM Treasury. Professor John Abraham, one of the foremost experts on pharmaceutical policy concurs: “the pharmaceutical industry was, and is, permitted to have privileged strategic access to, and involvement with, govt regulatory policy over and above any other interest group”. Dr Dzintars Gotham, Chris Redd, Morten Thaysen, Tabitha Ha, Heidi Chow and Katy Athersuch, StopAids. Linkback: Roche, British Technology Group, Sanofi-Aventis, #GlaxoSmithKlein, Abbott Laboratories, BASF, Janssen Pharmaceutica.

References

  1. ^ Aspen Holdings Integrated Report 2017 page 18, Aspen Pharma.
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