Category Archives: Pharmaceuticals industry

Revealed: key files shredded as UK government panic grew over infected blood deaths lawsuit

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Lost documents prevented victims from finding out the truth, official inquiry told

Disastrous failures that caused the contaminated blood scandal were denied by ministers for decades after officials destroyed, lost and blocked access to key documents, memos submitted to the official inquiry reveal.

Several batches of files involving the work of a blood safety advisory committee were shredded as the government faced the threat of legal action, documents show. Patients who were given contaminated blood when they were children have also told the infected blood inquiry how their hospital medical files were destroyed or initially withheld.

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Warning over asthma drug after 500 neuropsychiatric reactions reported in young children

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UK medicines regulator says information on boxes of montelukast will alert users to risk of mood and behaviour changes

More than 500 adverse neuropsychiatric reactions have been reported in children under the age of nine involving an asthma drug which is to get new warnings over its risks.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) announced last week that more prominent warnings would be added to the information provided on boxes of the asthma drug montelukast, sold under the brand name Singulair.

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‘Our culture is dying’: vulture shortage threatens Zoroastrian burial rites

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Inadvertent poisoning of scavengers across Indian subcontinent is forcing some communities to give up ancient custom

Traditional Zoroastrian burial rites are becoming increasingly impossible to perform because of the precipitous decline of vultures in India, Iran and Pakistan.

For millennia, Parsi communities have traditionally disposed of their dead in structures called dakhma, or “towers of silence”. These circular, elevated edifices are designed to prevent the soil, and the sacred elements of earth, fire and water, from being contaminated by corpses.

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Danish firm behind weight-loss drug Wegovy raises profit forecast to £15.3bn

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Novo Nordisk, which is now Europe’s most valuable company, also reports strong sales of diabetes drug Ozempic

Strong sales of diabetes and weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy have prompted the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk to raise its 2024 profit forecast to up to £15.3bn, with supply shortages starting to ease.

Europe’s most valuable company, whose stock market value exceeds the size of the Danish economy, has struggled to keep up with runaway demand for the two weight-loss jabs.

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People with MND in England and Wales fear losing access to life-extending drug

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Exclusive: NHS cost threshold has not been raised by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence since 2004

People with motor neurone disease have spoken of their devastation at a likely loss of access to a life-extending drug due to an NHS cost threshold that has not been raised since 2004.

Tofersen has slowed the progress of the illness in trials but the chances of the drug being recommended for use in England and Wales are said to be slim.

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UK swapped to fatal US blood products to save money, minutes suggest

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Exclusive: contaminated blood campaigners say internal 1976 Immuno AG document proves British government negligence

The British government was willing to risk infecting NHS patients to get “lower-priced” blood products, according to a document that campaigners claim proves state and corporate guilt in one of the country’s worst ever scandals.

A public inquiry into the deaths of an estimated 2,900 people infected with conditions such as HIV and hepatitis will publish its final report in May, four decades after the NHS started prescribing blood and blood products – including from drug users, prisoners and sex workers – sourced from the US.

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A greener weed: the UK firm growing carbon-neutral cannabis

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Glass Pharms hope its approach could show the way for all kinds of energy-intensive horticulture in the UK

For 26 years, Olivier Dehon worked in the corporate sector, ending up as chief financial officer for Xerox in the UK and Ireland before retiring four years ago. Last month he delivered his first consignment of high-strength cannabis.

Dehon’s dope is legal and above board, produced to supply the UK’s burgeoning market for medical cannabis on prescription. What’s more, Dehon and his colleagues believe it is the first carbon-neutral indoor weed grown anywhere in the world.

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EU plan for medicine stockpile could worsen UK’s record shortages

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Bloc plans to bulk-buy key drugs for all 27 countries, potentially leaving Britain ‘behind in the queue’

The EU is to stockpile key medicines that will worsen the record drug shortages in the UK, with experts warning that the country could be left “behind in the queue”.

The EU is seeking to safeguard its supplies by switching to a system in which its 27 members work together to secure reliable supplies of 200 commonly used medications, such as antibiotics, painkillers and vaccines.

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Slain Amazon activist Bruno Pereira’s son fighting rare form of cancer

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Pedro, five, was diagnosed with neuroblastoma; a fund has been set up so that his family can afford expensive chemotherapy drug

Leading artists, Indigenous activists and politicians across Brazil are urging people to contribute to a fund to help the son of the slain Amazon activist Bruno Pereira, who has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.

Pedro Pereira, five, the son of anthropologist Beatriz Matos and Bruno Pereira – who was ambushed and killed in the western Amazon in June 2022 alongside the British journalist Dom Phillips – was diagnosed with stage four neuroblastoma last year.

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FDA approves program to allow Florida to import Canadian prescription drugs

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State will be first to import drugs under federal program that Florida governor says could save consumers $150m in first year

A public health policy that won rare backing from both the Biden and Trump administrations looks ready to open a flow of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada to Florida, ending a decades-long block on the importation of certain pharmaceuticals to the US.

The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted the state approval under a drugs importation program that seeks to lower the cost of medicines for US consumers without imposing additional risks to their health or safety.

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AstraZeneca buys Chinese cancer therapy firm Gracell for $1.2bn

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Gracell Biotechnologies acquisition marks China’s growing importance to the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker

AstraZeneca has struck a deal to buy a Chinese cancer therapy company for up to $1.2bn (£950m), as Britain’s biggest drugmaker expands its footprint in its second-largest market.

The Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical firm announced on Tuesday it would acquire Gracell Biotechnologies, which is focused on a type of cancer therapy known as CAR-T that modifies a patient’s cells to fight the disease.

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‘They thought I had cancer’: painkiller banned in UK linked to Britons’ deaths in Spain

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Patients’ group says reactions to metamizole can cause sepsis and organ failure – and British and Irish people are at higher risk

A patients group representing several British victims has launched legal action against the Spanish government over claims it failed to safeguard people against the potentially fatal side effects of one of the country’s most popular painkillers, involved in a series of serious illnesses and deaths.

The drug metamizole, commonly sold in Spain under the brand name Nolotil, is banned in several countries, including Britain, the US, India and Australia. It can cause a condition known as agranulocytosis, which reduces white blood cells, increasing the risk of potentially fatal infection.

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South Africa ‘can’t afford’ to pay for new anti-HIV drug, despite cut-price offer

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The jab, given every two months, has been offered on a non-profit basis, but it can’t compete with a cheap daily HIV-prevention pill

The South African health department says the reduced cost of a new anti-HIV injection is still three times more than it can afford to pay.

The UK-based drug company ViiV Healthcare has lowered the price from 729 rand per shot (£32) to between 540 and 570 rand (£23.66-£24.97).

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Private health firm Sciensus fails to fix defects that led to UK patient’s death

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Exclusive: Regulator extends part suspension of licence to July 2024 after IT blunder led to incorrect dosage of cancer treatment

A private health company paid millions by the NHS has failed to fix safety defects that led to the death of a cancer patient, the Guardian can reveal.

Three patients were hospitalised and a fourth died when they were given the wrong doses of a powerful chemotherapy drug after a catastrophic IT failure at the medicine manufacturing unit of Sciensus in April this year.

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Several hospitalised in Austria after using suspected fake diabetes drug

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Health regulator says serious side-effects possibly caused by insulin in counterfeit versions of Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic

Several people have been admitted to hospital in Austria after using suspected fake versions of Novo Nordisk’s diabetes drug Ozempic, the country’s health safety body has said, the first report of harm to users as a European hunt for counterfeiters widened.

The patients were reported to have suffered hypoglycaemia and seizures, serious side-effects that indicate that the product contained insulin instead of Ozempic’s active ingredient semaglutide, the health safety regulator Bundesamt für Sicherheit im Gesundheitswesen (BASG) said on Monday.

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South Africa launches ‘unprecedented’ investigation of Johnson & Johnson over TB drug prices

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Competition watchdog probes claims of profiteering by US drugmaker in country where tuberculosis is biggest killer

South Africa’s Competition Commission will investigate the American drugmaker Johnson & Johnson for the high price it has been charging for the tuberculosis medicine bedaquiline, as well as for extending its 20-year patent until 2027 to block cheaper generics from entering the country.

The commission’s investigation was made public last week by the health department and the Health Justice Initiative (HJI) legal organisation at a media briefing of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The commission investigates matters when it has reasonable suspicion of exploitative or unethical behaviour.

This story was produced by the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism. Readers can sign up here for the centre’s newsletter

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China renews crackdown on corruption in healthcare

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At least 177 officials reportedly under investigation amid revival of Xi Jinping’s decade-old anti-corruption drive

China’s graft-busters have set their sights on the country’s healthcare sector, in what has been described as the biggest crackdown on corruption in the history of the industry.

At least 177 hospital bosses and Chinese Communist party (CCP) secretaries have been placed under investigation this year according to local media reports – more than double the number last year. In a press conference on Tuesday, the National Health Commission (NHC) said the campaign would focus on people who had used their position to procure kickbacks and corruption in the pharmaceutical sector, the state tabloid the Global Times reported.

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Indian doctors rebel over diktat to prescribe cheaper drugs

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Indian Medical Association says that testing is substandard in the manufacture of generic medicines with ‘no guarantee of quality’

Indian doctors have been told they can no longer prescribe branded drugs for their patients, provoking vehement protest from the Indian Medical Association [IMA].

New government guidelines demand a wider use of generic drugs, which are 30%-80% cheaper, reducing the cost of medicines for millions. When doctors prescribe a medicine for fever, for example, they will have to give paracetamol, not drugs such as Panadol or Calpol. Doctors liken this to “running trains without tracks” because the quality of generic drugs cannot be guaranteed.

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Children’s medicines in short supply across Australia as cold and flu cases continue to rise

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Chemists say global supply issues and increased demand behind lack of stock, but antibiotic substitutions are available

Australian parents are struggling to find medicines for their children as cold and flu cases continue to rise this winter, according to health experts and practitioners.

As part of ongoing medicine shortages caused by global supply problems since the Covid pandemic, children’s medicine has become a “hotspot” in the last couple of weeks.

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Sciensus’s licence partly suspended after death of cancer patient

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Regulator acts after firm paid millions by NHS for healthcare gave patients wrong chemotherapy dose

Britain’s health regulator has partly suspended the manufacturing licence of Sciensus, a private company paid millions by the NHS to provide vital medicines, after the death of a cancer patient who was given the wrong dose of chemotherapy.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said it had taken “immediate” action under regulation 28 of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 law “where it appears to the MHRA that in the interests of safety the licence should be suspended”.

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