Amidst the barrage of headlines about global economic hardship and unequal access to resources, you might have missed the good news of a corporation that has pledged to sell all of its product at cost to poor countries. What a difference that will make.
Pfizer says it will offer its full suite of patented drugs, including
This past weekend, Donald Trump used his daily White House coronavirus briefings to again urge Americans to take hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that has not been shown to be safe or effective against Covid-19.
“What do you have to lose? Take it,” the president said on Saturday as he boasted that
A group of Blue Cross Blue Shield insurers is investing $55 million in a venture that aims to offer cheaper prices to their members on generic drugs that currently have little or no competition, the companies said on Thursday.
The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) and 18 Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurers are
If generic drugs are supposed to be a smart cost-saving alternative for patients and health plans, why aren’t they made available more quickly on Medicare Part D formularies?
That’s the key question raised in a September report by the Association for Accessible Medicines, a trade group for manufacturers of generics. It found an average lag of
On Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the state could make its own prescription drug in an effort to the power out of the hands of greedy drugmakers.
He wants California to work with pharmaceuticals that make generic drugs on its behalf so that the state’s residents could afford the drugs. Newsom explained that the
It’s a price tag that would give anyone sticker shock: $14,213.99 for a 90-day supply of generic acid reflux medication. But when Suzanne Luttig picks up the prescription for the drug, Zegerid, she pays only $24.
The catch? Luttig, a full-time professional photographer in Omaha, works an extra 25
The chemical sciences has a sustainability problem. Chemical production is expected to double by 2030, according to a recent UN report, but quite how this will be done without costing the Earth is still an unanswered question. At the recent International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry’s congress in Paris, the ‘father of green
Puerto Rico should stop giving so much importance to the island’s tax advantages to attract investors and instead focus more on sustainability and quality at a time when the supply chain factor also increases in importance.
That is the consensus of industry experts who attended the Puerto Rico Manufacturers Association Convention over the weekend. Newly appointed
The last few weeks have reiterated the critical importance of sustainability action. From Extinction Rebellion and the overwhelmingly positive response the Committee on Climate Change’s call for net zero emission targets by 2050, to the UN’s report on biodiversity, to the pharma-specific crisis around opioids and prosecutions in the US; the issues are high profile,
In June 2013, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration tapped Altaf Lal, an American of Indian origin with sterling public-health credentials, to solve what appeared to be a diplomacy problem. The FDA’s relations with Indian regulators were in tatters, one month after India’s largest drug company, Ranbaxy, pleaded guilty to seven felonies related to falsifying quality
Ever since 1979, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has required that pharmaceutical companies put expiration dates on prescription and over-the-counter medicines.
That doesn’t mean your bottle of ibuprofen will go bad in the same way as, say, an expired carton of milk. The date that you see printed on a pill bottle is the
New Oxfam research shows that four pharmaceutical corporations—Abbott, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & CO (MSD), and Pfizer—systematically stash their profits in overseas tax havens. They appear to deprive developing countries of more than $100 million every year—money that is urgently needed to meet the health needs of people in these countries—while vastly overcharging for their
For the 16 years that Dr. Brian Westerberg, a Canadian surgeon, worked volunteer missions at the Mulago National Referral Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, scarcity was the norm. The patients usually exceeded the 1,500 allotted beds. Running water was once cut off when the debt-ridden hospital was unable to pay its bills. On some of his
This is becoming the year of the health care “hot potato,” as various players in the market battle over who is the villain. The Senate Finance Committee kicked off 2019 with hearings aimed at getting to the root of soaring prescription drug prices and identifying bad actors. Suggested solutions ranged from
Synthetic opioids outlast current antidotes. A nanoparticle-based alternative could fix that.
A newly developed single-dose opioid antidote lasts several days, a study in mice shows. If the results can be duplicated in humans, the treatment may one day help prevent overdoses from deadly drugs like fentanyl.
Normally, a dose of the opioid antidote
A single course of antibiotics can change the composition of oral and gut microbiomes for at least a year, according to a modelling study by UCL researchers.
Moreover, this change leads to a decrease in the number and types of microbes found in the gut, but an increase in the diversity of the oral microbiome. These
The misuse of prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications resulted in an estimated 358,000 trips to U.S. emergency departments in 2016 — and almost half of those cases involved young people ages 15 to 34, according to a new study based on a national public health surveillance system.
The analysis, reported online March 6 in the American
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Every person in the U.S. will experience, on average, two broken bones in their lifetime.
It is expected that more than 6.3 million bones will be broken in the U.S. this year, according to the National Institutes of Health. Average recovery time for a young, healthy adult with a broken arm is six
PETALING JAYA: The Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy has called for an end to the “monopoly” of pharmaceutical giants to procure drugs for the government within five years.
Otherwise, it said, it would send the wrong signal to the healthcare industry that innovation, value and fair competition are not recognised or rewarded.
Commenting on the
