Paula Lorgelly, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Cancer patients will benefit from the investment but so will people with other health conditions because the funding also covers medicines that Pharmac ranked as more important.
David Menkes, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Growing evidence shows industry payments to doctors play a key role in unethical pharmaceutical marketing. New Zealand’s disclosure scheme fails to capture all companies and payment types.
Horseshoe crabs play a unique role in medicine, but they’re also ecologically important in their home waters along the Atlantic coast. Can regulators balance the needs of humans and nature?
A national procurement program for essential medicines could provide a principled, evidence-based solution to the current challenges facing a national pharmacare program in Canada.
Pharmaceutical and insurance industries that could lose profit through lower drug prices are not happy that a pharmacare bill is planned for fall. They are speaking out and mobilizing their allies.
The federal government’s proposed Agile Licensing drug approval regulations mean Canada will have less information about the risks of new medicines, and higher costs.
Some commercial products and practices are directly linked to avoidable ill health, planetary damage, and social and health inequity. Large transnational corporations are especially to blame.
The pharma industry claims lower prescription drug prices will mean less access to new medication for Canadians. It’s an old threat that pits profits against patients’ rights to affordable drugs.
An 18-month treatment with lecanemab slows functional and cognitive loss by 27 per cent in people with mild Alzheimer’s disease. But this is only the first step towards a real cure.
Ronald Labonte, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
Waiving patent rights on COVID-19 vaccines and drugs is still crucial to ensure access globally, but the waiver on the table at the June World Trade Organization meeting doesn’t do the job.
Changes to Canada’s Patented Medicine Prices Review Board regulations have been postponed for a fourth time in two years as Canadians continue to pay some of the highest drug prices in the world.
When drugs are taken off the market because they are either unsafe or don’t work, do pharma companies admit that there are problems? Or do they deny the evidence?
If Big Pharma wants to achieve the ultimate image makeover, it must capitalize on the current public good will about its COVID-19 vaccines by prioritizing socially responsible practices.
COVID-19 has exacerbated a backlog of domestic and foreign drug manufacturing inspections that the FDA is still too short-staffed to adequately deal with.
Associate Professor in the SAMRC Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science - PRICELESS SA (Priority Cost Effective Lessons in Systems Strengthening South Africa), University of the Witwatersrand