Geneva-based Covalence, a company that markets the information system, EthicalQuote, has observed that pharma is not keeping pace with other industries in terms of the overall balance of global good and bad news coverage in four broad ethical areas: labour standards, waste management, product social utility and human rights policy. “The pharma industry is losing [...]

Today, 13 pharmaceutical companies, the U.S., U.K. and U.A.E governments, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank and other global health organisations announced a new, coordinated push to accelerate progress toward eliminating or controlling 10 neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) by the end of the decade. Uniting efforts with NTD-endemic countries, partners pledged to [...]

Public revolt in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere makes it clear that many yearn for rights and liberties. But states are not the only institutions obligated to respect human rights. Companies also have human rights responsibilities and can be complicit in violating human rights. For example, during the first days of protests in Cairo, telecom [...]

Several of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies said they plan to tighten screening of physicians who promote their drugs after ProPublica reported last month that more than 250 of them had been sanctioned for misconduct. Eli Lilly and Co. said that next year, for the first time, it would hire an outside firm to search [...]

Drug and medical product makers and other health care companies are pledging to donate at least $15.5 million in cash and products to help victims of Tuesday’s earthquake in Haiti. That amounts to almost one-third of the donations — totaling at least $48 million — announced by corporations and their foundations by Friday afternoon. Besides [...]

At the risk of stating the obvious, consumer expectations will continue to change and marketers’ level of embrace will continue to amplify towards the the rapidly changing and increasingly powerful social platform. With the understanding that pharma is an extremely heavily regulated industry, you still have to wonder why more pharmaceutical marketers not only don’t [...]

Forced leave, wage reductions, hiring freezes and shorter hours simply did not do enough. A year into this recession, companies across the board are resorting to mass job cuts. Home Depot, Caterpillar, Sprint Nextel and at least eight other companies announced on Monday they would cut more than 75,000 jobs in the US and around [...]

Increased attention on product human risk and smaller media coverage of drug donations have challenged Pharmaceuticals’ ethical reputation last year, states a report published today by Geneva-based research firm Covalence – Covalence Pharmaceutical Industry Report 2008. The pharmaceutical industry dropped from the first to the third rank of Covalence all-time EthicalQuote ranking across 10 industries. [...]

Today Pfizer China announced it is providing up to RMB 10 million (approximately $1.4 million U.S.D) in medicines and financial assistance to relief organizations operating in the region worst affected by the massive earthquake. “We were devastated to hear about the rising death tolls and escalating number of injuries in Sichuan Province,” said Ahmet Esen, [...]

Should poor governments be allowed to break drug patents for humanitarian reasons? That question is front-and-center at a major public health conference sponsored by the World Health Organization that started on 28 April in Geneva. Top-notch policy experts from around the world have gathered to make formal policy recommendations about patents to Third World governments [...]