India’s “health camps”: the drug rep will see you now
Dear Frederik
Truth is always bitter to experience and prevails; it’s a very well summarized article on health screening camps in India. As expected and evident from the responses and citations, the article has created a good impact on many including HCPs, policy makers, pharmaceutical professionals, patient caretakers, media and lobbying groups. I anticipate this will motivate many pharma companies operating in India to think beyond, devising an appropriate code of conduct (COC) guidelines on screening camps that may help regulators towards better patient safety benefitting patients and society.
Being a pharmaceutical professional for more than one and half decades in India, I've experienced many healthcare professionals (HCPs) decline involving pharma reps during screening camps for conducting tests or other diagnostic assistance due to conflict of interests. In addition to that, screening camps are not a mandatory organizational strategy by all pharma companies selling medicines in communicable as well as non communicable disease segments that need awareness (Thyroid, HCV, HBV, Cancer, Diabetes, TB, Dengue and etc). Conducting health screening camps with standard operating practices varies from organization to organization based on internal COC design and policies. I have seen MNCs operating in India have better practice and adoption level on ethics in comparison to Indian counterpart operating in the same segment or therapy area. Many MNCs do have printed ethical guidelines and COC booklet that are aligning with the Medical Council of India or IFPMA code of sales and marketing practices. It is a mandatory practice by many MNCs to conduct COC training and workshops before sending pharma sales reps to fields as experienced. However on Indian counterpart I'll reserve my opinion barring a few companies that are strict on ethics and compliance.
For any deviations or malpractices in screening camps, it is not the company but business unit (BU) heads are responsible due to the greed of selling more medicines utilizing health camps as a tool. This is done in order to justify their high flying salaries and incentives and in the Indian context, it is seen and experienced BU heads create unnecessary work pressures on poor pharmaceutical reps, pressurizing them for doing anything and everything for the sake of business. If the poor pharma rep doesn’t listen to his Senior Director/BU Head about the way they want to conduct screening camps or if the screening health camps numbers are not met the rep may be forcefully ousted of the division or the company.
Adding to this, during screening if anything goes wrong, the poor rep generally loses his job without a second thought. He may gets sacked, terminated or has to resign, possibly bringing disrepute to the organization and the top management even if the brains behind everything are the BU Heads. Your article captured many pharma sales reps as they are easy targets and bringing them into the limelight are also easies. In recent years, many untimely deaths of young pharmaceutical sales reps (heart attacks/suicide) have been reported in India, as seen in social media posts and local news reports. Hence for any deviation beyond guidelines on screening camps, journalists/regulators should reach out to the unit heads for interactions; exploring what, why and how it happened instead of targeting a poor pharmaceutical sales rep.
Also it is seen that, low diagnosis and low reach of healthcare in disease segments are a major hindrance to a better health outcome in emerging and developing economies like India. Awareness campaigns at different settings are, even if not so perfect, these camps on other hand would have saved millions of life due to better awareness, screening and disease detection. In resource limited settings even imperfect makes sense at times though freed on the other hand is bad.
My sincere compliments to you once again, it’s a very good article towards patient safety and ethics. Pharmaceutical companies should create a revised policy or COC towards health screening camps that have a huge potential in creating awareness and educating patients in India for diversity and disparity in many terms. The health camps should be non-commercial instead of anticipating a return on investment (ROI) in the pretext of conducting screening camps. The same may be propagated as a social philanthropy project to drive health awareness towards nation building benefitting patients and society.
Sincerely
Sampada Kumar Dash
India
Brief Profile:
Sampada Kumar Dash is a pharmaceutical professional and an alumnus of Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi, India, currently working as a Project Manager at Strategm Advisory Services. His broad areas of experience cover Sales and Marketing, International Business, Marketing Research and Management Consulting over a period of 16 years in Pharmaceutical Industry. He has worked with domestic as well as multinational pharma/bio-pharma companies. Sampada is a life member of Indian Red Cross Society and a member of Academy of International Business (AIB) – a leading association of scholars from the global academic institutions as well as consultants, researchers, and NGO representatives working in the field of international business and trade. He has participated in various conferences and presented research works on emerging marketing concepts. This is purely his personal opinion with response to the article - India’s “health camps”: the drug rep will see you now. (BMJ 2015; 351 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h6413)
Competing interests:
No competing interests
18 May 2016
Sampada Kumar Dash
Pharmaceutical Professional and Digital Enthusiast
Rapid Response:
India’s “health camps”: the drug rep will see you now
Dear Frederik
Truth is always bitter to experience and prevails; it’s a very well summarized article on health screening camps in India. As expected and evident from the responses and citations, the article has created a good impact on many including HCPs, policy makers, pharmaceutical professionals, patient caretakers, media and lobbying groups. I anticipate this will motivate many pharma companies operating in India to think beyond, devising an appropriate code of conduct (COC) guidelines on screening camps that may help regulators towards better patient safety benefitting patients and society.
Being a pharmaceutical professional for more than one and half decades in India, I've experienced many healthcare professionals (HCPs) decline involving pharma reps during screening camps for conducting tests or other diagnostic assistance due to conflict of interests. In addition to that, screening camps are not a mandatory organizational strategy by all pharma companies selling medicines in communicable as well as non communicable disease segments that need awareness (Thyroid, HCV, HBV, Cancer, Diabetes, TB, Dengue and etc). Conducting health screening camps with standard operating practices varies from organization to organization based on internal COC design and policies. I have seen MNCs operating in India have better practice and adoption level on ethics in comparison to Indian counterpart operating in the same segment or therapy area. Many MNCs do have printed ethical guidelines and COC booklet that are aligning with the Medical Council of India or IFPMA code of sales and marketing practices. It is a mandatory practice by many MNCs to conduct COC training and workshops before sending pharma sales reps to fields as experienced. However on Indian counterpart I'll reserve my opinion barring a few companies that are strict on ethics and compliance.
For any deviations or malpractices in screening camps, it is not the company but business unit (BU) heads are responsible due to the greed of selling more medicines utilizing health camps as a tool. This is done in order to justify their high flying salaries and incentives and in the Indian context, it is seen and experienced BU heads create unnecessary work pressures on poor pharmaceutical reps, pressurizing them for doing anything and everything for the sake of business. If the poor pharma rep doesn’t listen to his Senior Director/BU Head about the way they want to conduct screening camps or if the screening health camps numbers are not met the rep may be forcefully ousted of the division or the company.
Adding to this, during screening if anything goes wrong, the poor rep generally loses his job without a second thought. He may gets sacked, terminated or has to resign, possibly bringing disrepute to the organization and the top management even if the brains behind everything are the BU Heads. Your article captured many pharma sales reps as they are easy targets and bringing them into the limelight are also easies. In recent years, many untimely deaths of young pharmaceutical sales reps (heart attacks/suicide) have been reported in India, as seen in social media posts and local news reports. Hence for any deviation beyond guidelines on screening camps, journalists/regulators should reach out to the unit heads for interactions; exploring what, why and how it happened instead of targeting a poor pharmaceutical sales rep.
Also it is seen that, low diagnosis and low reach of healthcare in disease segments are a major hindrance to a better health outcome in emerging and developing economies like India. Awareness campaigns at different settings are, even if not so perfect, these camps on other hand would have saved millions of life due to better awareness, screening and disease detection. In resource limited settings even imperfect makes sense at times though freed on the other hand is bad.
My sincere compliments to you once again, it’s a very good article towards patient safety and ethics. Pharmaceutical companies should create a revised policy or COC towards health screening camps that have a huge potential in creating awareness and educating patients in India for diversity and disparity in many terms. The health camps should be non-commercial instead of anticipating a return on investment (ROI) in the pretext of conducting screening camps. The same may be propagated as a social philanthropy project to drive health awareness towards nation building benefitting patients and society.
Sincerely
Sampada Kumar Dash
India
Brief Profile:
Sampada Kumar Dash is a pharmaceutical professional and an alumnus of Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi, India, currently working as a Project Manager at Strategm Advisory Services. His broad areas of experience cover Sales and Marketing, International Business, Marketing Research and Management Consulting over a period of 16 years in Pharmaceutical Industry. He has worked with domestic as well as multinational pharma/bio-pharma companies. Sampada is a life member of Indian Red Cross Society and a member of Academy of International Business (AIB) – a leading association of scholars from the global academic institutions as well as consultants, researchers, and NGO representatives working in the field of international business and trade. He has participated in various conferences and presented research works on emerging marketing concepts. This is purely his personal opinion with response to the article - India’s “health camps”: the drug rep will see you now. (BMJ 2015; 351 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h6413)
Competing interests: No competing interests