PHM-Exch> Philippines Pres faces Senate over secret deal with big pharma

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Meghana meghana at haiap.org
13 July 2009

Philippines’ President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has been summoned to a Senate
committee today to face charges that she has agreed a secret deal with
multinational drugmakers which overturns plans to curb the prices of the
country’s most widely-prescribed drugs.

Senator Manuel Roxas, who chairs the Senate Oversight Committee on
Affordable Medicines, has called for the President and a number of her
Cabinet colleagues to explain to the panel what went on during “her
confidential meeting with representatives of multinational drug companies on
July 8.”

That meeting was attended by representatives of Pfizer, Roche, the
Philippine Chamber of the Pharmaceutical Industry and the Pharmaceutical and
Healthcare Association of the Philippines (PHAP), among others. According to
Sen Roxas, they had asked to meet the President in order to stop her from
signing an executive order which would authorize the setting of Maximum
Retail Prices (MRPs) on 22 widely-prescribed, essential drugs.


Source link:
http://www.pharmatimes.com/WorldNews/article.aspx?id=16204&src=EWorldNews


Web: *www.haiap.org *
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20090715/8cfdbee7/attachment-0002.html>