MEDICAL REPRESENTATIVES ACTIVITIES SHALL BE REGULATED RATHER THAN BANNED

May 17, 2011, Saint-Petersburg. Association of International Pharmaceutical Manufacturers (AIPM) believes that the introduction of the proposed wording of the Article 69 of the Federal law draft “On bases of health protection of citizens of the Russian Federation” can cause serious damage to Russian healthcare. This opinion was expressed during the Russian Pharmaceutical Forum of Adam Smith Institute.

The draft law “On Bases of Health Protection of Citizens of the Russian Federation” was submitted to the State Duma on April 21 this year. Generally the Federal law draft is a very important document for the legal system ensuring healthcare proper functioning. However, number of its provisions and, in particular, the introduced ban on interaction between doctors and pharmaceutical company representatives during the work time (Article 69) can have a negative impact on quality of medical support provided to Russian citizens and needs serious revision.

The main task of medical representatives is the provision of the most current, complete and accurate professional information, mainly about the direction of therapy development, new medicines, new indications, results of clinic researches, as well as collection of information on side effects of medicines and comprehensive monitoring of safety, which is also a responsibility of the manufacturing company in accordance with the Article 64 of the Federal law N 61 “On Circulation of Medicines”.

According to special researchers held in Russia, medical representatives’ visits are the most important sources of information. They provide 91% of doctors with information on new medicines, 62% - on new indications of existing medicines, 50% - on innovative methods and techniques of treatment and diagnostics (VTsIOM research, 2010). Besides that, according to the research conducted by COMCON, medical representatives were also named as second important source of information, medical reference books being the first. However, they are not even in top ten factors, influencing prescription of medicine to patient.

“Sphere of interaction between pharmaceutical companies and doctors undoubtedly requires establishment of clear and transparent rules. With them being introduced, we believe that the most optimum balance will be the combination of legal restrictions and self-regulatory measures which complies with international practice of regulating the possibility of communication between doctors and medical representatives. Companies, members of the Association, while working with medical community, are guided by the Code of Ethics that regulates AIPM activities since 1998 and imposes serious restrictions on such communication”, executive director of AIPM Vladimir Shipkov said. “The Code in the view of its legal practice is clearly underestimated by regulators and other stakeholders in healthcare and medicines supply market, he emphasized.”

In most countries of the world medical representatives are allowed to meet and communicate with medical community whenever it is convenient and in a place agreed upon. At this the most important criteria is the possibility and willingness of a doctor to meet a medical representative. International practice shows that certain countries that banned medical representative from visiting doctor at his place of work were faced with significant reduction of quality of medical help and had to withdraw such measures. These countries’ experience clearly demonstrates necessity to preserve activities of medical representatives having mostly informational and education character and contributing to improvement of professional competence of the medical community. Social significance of these activities aimed ultimately to the benefit of patients can be hardly overestimated.

For additional information and accreditation, please, contact:

Elena Yankovskaya, Edelman Imageland

tel: + 7 (495) 785 22 55 (# 132), mobile: + 7 (916) 246 83 35

е-mail: Elena.Yankovskaya@edelman.com

Natalia Radunenko, AIPM

tel: +7 (495) 933 70 40, mobile: + 7 (903) 540 89 47

e-mail: N.Radunenko@AIPM.ORG