I refer to DPG's letter Big Pharma controlling doctors and cannot help but agree in utter disgust with him how the public may be actually being taken for a ride. Perhaps patients don't know it but this practice may be ultimately detrimental to their health.
If corruption is killing this country, then the almost blatant bribery that goes on in the pharmaceutical world is literally killing patients. Pharmaceutical companies in their enthusiasm to market new drugs skew statistical reports in their favour and then throw lavish parties in hotels, resorts, secluded islands and even at the KL Tower to tempt our ever willing doctors to attend these functions.
These functions (costing sometimes millions of ringgit ) are even held in foreign countries with top-class entertainment at karaoke and disco sessions lasting till the wee hours of the morning just to 'convince' our doctors how effective their product is. Whether anything more then the six-star luxury, parties and the buffets is offered to these doctors is anybody's guess. But the results are almost always predictable.
The medical fraternity who frequent these Big Pharma party sessions almost always come back and order their products for their hospitals and then subsequently influence their subordinates to use them. That's Big Pharma's influence on our doctors. But the story doesn't end there. As these entertainment and sometimes wild parties - be it at the KL Tower, Phuket or Vegas - cost quite a bit, business being business, the price is costed right into the product which the government, or ultimately the patient, has to pay.
Of course, if the product works and the patient can afford it, all is well. However, if the drug does not work or it is too costly, then ultimately the patient is the one to suffer. What's galling is that doctors are a part this disgraceful litany of bribery and corruption that can compromise a patient's healthcare in terms of economic cost. It is nothing short of disgraceful and is clearly unethical.
Although not all doctors are involved, this phenomenon appears to be very common among government and university-based doctors. Why doesn't the director-general of health do something about this unless he, too, is part of this vicious cycle?
Some of these entertainment outings to 'deliberate the efficacy of a drug' by pharmaceutical companies are so entertaining and lucrative that doctors and medical college lecturers literally abandon their departments thus adding to a prolonged waiting time for patient treatment and operations. In the case of medical lecturers, their students are left in the lurch.
There is a medical school in northern Malaysia where the dean recently complained at a seminar that his lecturers used almost every excuse in the book to 'mengembara' (travel) to escape the boredom of the town where the school was located. In fact he commented that some of these lecturers were spending more time on planes than in classrooms. Is it any wonder our medical education standards are appalling ?
