AND THE PHARMA INDUSTRY: Need for greater scrutiny, transparency and accountability

The relationship between the medical pro-fession and the pharmaceutical industry has come under severe criticism all over the world in the recent years. The industry is being blamed for corrupting the medical profession. This disease is not only prevalent in the devel-oped world but in the developing countries too where prices of most of the drugs remain be-yond the reach of the common man. The in-dustry is alleged to indulge in all sort of un-ethical practices to influence the prescribing habits of the doctors for which they are re-warded through various ways. These include joy rides for the physicians and their families to picnic spots within the country and over-seas, provision of costly gifts, entertainment for the families at five star hotels, sponsoring birth-day parties, wedding receptions besides fur-nishing the doctors homes and clinics. Of late even allegations of providing cars on leasing have also been reported. All this has brought a very bad name to the entire community of doc-tors although vast majority of them are con-scientious, ethical and God fearing and mostly refrain from accepting such favors despite lot of temptations. Time has come that this rela-tionship must be looked into carefully to en-sure transparency and accountability. Change in the doctors ’ attitude During the past few years, there has been manifold increase in the demand and expec