Pfizer restricts UK supplies as US import battle escalates
pharmafile | September 16, 2004 | News story | |
Pfizer has begun restricting supplies of its medicines to UK wholesalers – a move widely interpreted as trying to head off imports into the US, where demand for cheaper foreign imports is growing.
Accounting for more than 50% of global revenues, the US market is by far the most important for the pharmaceutical industry but many American consumers are now aware that US prices are often the highest in the world.
US regulator the FDA has opposed private entrepreneur traders and state-sponsored moves to import greater volumes of drugs from Canada and Mexico, while most of the leading pharma companies imposed supply restrictions to Canadian wholesalers last year to restrict the cross-border trade.
The governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich recently became the first to announce an importation programme from Canada, the UK and Ireland via an online distribution house, potentially expanding greatly the volume of cheaper medicines available to US patients.
Pfizer confirmed that its restrictions of supplies to UK wholesalers had come into effect at the end of August but its statement did not acknowledge the real objective of the new controls.
"It enables Pfizer to unilaterally allocate sufficient supplies of medicines to its customers so that the needs of healthcare professionals and patients in the UK can continue to be met."
Within Europe, the UK has some of the highest prices, and many pharma companies have been using supply quotas in low price EU countries such as Spain to limit so-called parallel imports into the UK.
In a further statement, Pfizer indicated that issues of patient safety and control of the supply chain were behind the new restrictions, but it remains unclear how the capping will directly help the monitoring of these concerns.
The company said it was concerned that "patient safety is at risk of being compromised by medicines being interfered with outside the manufacturer's control, in the cross-border supply chain," and cited recent discoveries of counterfeit medicines, deficient repackaging, wrong package contents and incorrect re-labelling in medicines in the UK.
