BMJ  2008;336:413 (23 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.39497.390069.DB

News

South African drug companies are found guilty of price fixing

Pat Sidley

1 Johannesburg

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Four South African drug manufacturers have been found by the country’s competition authority to have colluded in fixing bids for the supply of products to the tender system through which the state buys drugs for its hospitals and healthcare services.

One of the companies, Adcock Ingram, is one of the largest makers of generic drugs in South Africa and holds several licences from multinational pharmaceutical companies for the local manufacture—supposedly cheaply—of drugs used to treat HIV and AIDS. The three other companies, one of which assisted the authority and gave details of the collaboration, are smaller.

The Competition Commission, a statutory body empowered by the government to investigate, control, and evaluate restrictive business practices, said it had found that Adcock Ingram Critical Care, Dismed Criticare, Thusanong Health Care, and Fresenius Kabi had formed a cartel and engaged in collusive tendering and market allocation. "The conduct was designed to avoid competition . . . [Full text of this article]


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