The name Kantha Bopha is well known in Switzerland. Beat Richner, pediatrician, cello player, and savvy fundraiser, has been working there tirelessly for over 20 years on his life-long project. He had already worked at the Children’s Hospital in Phnom Penh in the early 70’s, then the terror of the Khmer Rouge’s reign forced him...
Read moreAnimal testing has been and will remain controversial. Whereas most people accept the need to test new medicines or vaccines on laboratory animals before they are authorized for human use, it is also widely accepted that there is a need to strike the right and careful balance between expected benefit for patients and research on...
Read moreBy Brendan Shaw, IFPMA Assistant Director General Thank you for the opportunity to make this statement today on behalf of the research-based pharmaceutical companies and associations across the globe. It seems appropriate that today, forty years after the creation of the World Health Organization’s essential medicines list (EML) and in the midst of the Sustainable...
Read moreIt is quite amazing how health policy discussions are often held in a distorted and simplified manner. Nowhere does this apply more than in discussions on drugs and the pharmaceutical industry. Although a large portion of public health spending is accounted for by hospitals, doctors, other health care personnel, and services, the pharmaceutical industry is...
Read more(This is a re-posting that was first published on Monday 13 March in the Basler Zeitung) ‘Vets are expensive. Antibiotics are cheap.’ In a nutshell, this was a quote extracted from last week’s BBC report of the growing global problem of antimicrobial resistance highlighting the plight of overuse of antibiotics on farms in China. The BBC...
Read moreSwitching describes a physician’s decision to exchange one product that a patient receives for another. With the introduction of biosimilars, physicians may be encouraged to switch patients from an original biologic (reference product) to any of its biosimilars (or vice versa) in order to reduce costs. The considerations take into account the unique characteristics of...
Read moreCosts of cancer drugs have risen significantly in Switzerland over the past ten years, from an estimated CHF 445 million to CHF 775 million at ex-factory prices. Bearing in mind future combination treatments in immune-oncology, treatments which are likely to bring from now on unhoped for outcomes, it is timely to reflect on new kinds...
Read moreThis new set of policy principles outlines critical elements for a global framework on rare disease policy.
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